I can drive 55, but can I live it?

By way of context today, kids, you should know that for a time in the 1970s and 80s, the maximum speed limit on our nation's highways was a uniform 55 miles per hour. And it felt every bit as slow as it sounds.

In 1984, a guy named Sammy Hagar released a song called "I Can't Drive 55," supposedly in response to having received a ticket for going 62mph in a 55 zone.

The gist of the song was, "Go ahead and give me a ticket or throw me in jail or whatever you want to do, but I can't stop myself from going faster than 55."

I don't drive as fast now as I once did, which I attribute to getting a little older and hopefully a bit wiser.

Speaking of getting a little older, we arrive at the point of the post, which is this: Tomorrow I turn 55 years old.

This is not an especially momentous occasion for anyone, least of all me. I'm not a huge birthday guy to begin with, though I do enjoy hearing from my kids and other family and friends wishing me well, making fun of my advancing years, and generally touching base in the course of their otherwise busy days.

This just happens to be one of those birthdays that has some significance to it. When the second digit of your age is a '5,' it means you're halfway between age milestones. In my case, I'm five years from having turned 50 and five years away from a number that sounds particularly imposing: 60.

I don't know why I think this way, though. Those who are 60-plus in my immediate family (my sister Debbie, my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Chris) are all energetic and youthful and fun. They look and act nothing like 60 seemed to me when I was a teenager.

There is evidently much truth to the idea of age just being a number.

Still, I remember clearly when my dad turned 55 in 1984. Despite having always had gray/white hair since I was a baby, it was the first time I thought to myself, "Oh man, he's getting OLD. This is a little scary."

I don't feel that way now, though of course none of us feels a certain age is "old" once we ourselves approach it.

You get to a point where "old person" just means, "anybody older than me."

I think I'm going to go with that approach for now.

In the meantime, while I do drive faster than 55, I'm still sticking to the right two lanes along with all the other geezers. You reckless whippersnappers can feel free to blow past us in the finest Sammy Hagar tradition.

We're middle-aged people, which means we need to figure out the downsizing thing

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a decent job creating this image from the prompt "middle-aged people in a one-floor house." I've certainly seen it distort faces worse than this.

We recently helped my sister-in-law Chris move into a new home. Well, Terry far and away did the most work there. Jack and I just chipped in a few times each on carrying the heavy stuff.

The point is, Chris has new digs, and it's a house with no upstairs and no basement. Everything is on one floor with no steps to navigate.

This is a common move for those of us who are not yet old but who can see senior citizenhood somewhere on the distant horizon. You may be able to fly up and down stairs now, but what happens in, say, 15 years?

And what happens once most or all of your kids have flown the coop? Do you keep (or even need) a bigger home? Or do you move into something smaller and more manageable?

Terry and I are, for the foreseeable future, staying in the house where we raised our kids. We've been here 20 years and are working to remodel/spruce up the basement, kitchen, deck and various walls that desperately need painting.

Investing that kind of cash suggests you're going to stay somewhere for the long haul, and I suppose that's accurate in our case. We have no plans to move anytime soon.

Keeping the house relatively clean isn't an issue for us physically right now, and we can still do most of the yard work on our own. We do have a guy who cuts our grass and another who removes the snow from our driveway. But for the most part, we're OK maintaining the place ourselves.

Our house is something like 2,500 square feet with five bedrooms on a half-acre lot. There were many years when we needed every one of those bedrooms, but now we're able to use one as Terry's craft room, one as my office, and another as a nice guest room. I like that arrangement.

There will come a time, though, when we'll be better off in a house like the one Chris has rather than the one we have now, which includes both a sizeable basement and an upstairs.

That decision is probably two decades away, but it will come.

In the meantime, with four of the five kids gone, I kind of like living here and not having to tell someone to get their clothes off the stairs or their backpack off the floor.

The good fortune of having wonderful neighbors

I take for granted far too many blessings in my life. One is the fact that, for the past 18 years, we have had amazing neighbors.

They have been the same neighbors the entire time, by the way. Even with 18 years under our belts since we moved in, we are still the newcomers on this end of Miller Avenue.

Just to the west of us are the Warnekas, Tim & Beth. They have been there forever and a day and are just about the nicest people you will ever want to meet in your life. Their kids, Chris and Bridget, spent a lot of time playing with our kids when they were all growing up.

In fact, I am going to post a brilliant video that Bridget, Chloe and Jared made back in 2010. It is a tour de force of acting and video editing that deserves to be remembered. None of them is likely to be happy I've posted it, but it's too good not to share:

On our east side are Joe and Lisa, whom I've mentioned here before. My kids have been cutting their grass for the past decade or so. Last summer, Terry and I got to visit the campground where they spend much of their time during the warm-weather months. Quite often you will see Joe in our backyard doing pull-ups on our playground set.

We are a fairly tight-knit group among these three houses.

Which is just something I take as a matter of course until I hear horror stories from others about their neighbors. It makes me realize how fortunate we are to have such kind, considerate, pleasant people living near us.

That realization, combined with another viewing of the Tik Tok video above, makes me inordinately happy.