Getting older

Life is still at a crazy pace but a friend sent the following to me and it made me smile.  Bill is turning 69 tomorrow and we went to Applebees for lunch.  We had the wait staff sing to him and they gave him a free Sundae..............I had to buy mine!  It was one way to assuage our angst over his truck breaking down............eat and forget the troubles.
Of course this is not the best day for his truck to pack it in..............I have an assignment for quilt guild on Monday as well as two appointments that I must keep plus I will probably have to drive him to work and pick him up in the evening........I do not really like afternoon traffic between Prescott and Prescott Valley.  Most people treat it like it is really the Daytona 500 but there are no cheering crowds to fete those who beat it across the line before the light turns red!!!!!




So here goes with the "Aging" musings from my friend.

I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell

phones that everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse.  I

can't afford one.  So, I'm wearing my garage door opener.

I also made a cover for my hearing aid and now I have what

they call blue teeth, I think.

You know, I spent a fortune on deodorant before I realized

that people didn't like me anyway.

I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing

husbands on beer cans!

I was thinking about old age and decided that old age is 'when

you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired

to bounce it.'

I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age, and

call it 'Pumping Rust'.

I've gotten that dreaded furniture disease.  That's when your

chest is falling into your drawers!

When people see a cat's litter box, they always say, 'Oh,

have you got a cat?'  Just once I want to say, 'No, it's for

company!'

Employment application blanks always ask who is to be

notified in case of an emergency.  I think you should write,

'A Good Doctor'!

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a

whole lot more as they get older.  Then, it dawned on me. 

They were cramming for their finals.

As for me, I'm just hoping God grades on the curve.

Gentle Thoughts for Today -

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by

then your body and your fat have gotten to be really good

friends.

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to

buy a replacement.

He who hesitates is probably right.

Did you ever notice: The Roman Numerals for forty (40) are XL.

If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in

mind to blame.

The sole purpose of a child's middle name is so he can tell when

he's really in trouble..

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words 'The' and 'IRS'

together it spells 'Theirs...'

Aging: Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying

about your age and start bragging about it.

Some people try to turn back their odometers.  Not me, I want

people to know 'why' I look this way.  I've traveled a long way

and some of the roads weren't paved.

When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to your

youth, think of Algebra.

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up

or leaks.

One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that

it is such a nice change from being young.  Ah, being young

is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

Lord, Keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over

my mouth...

End of Summer and welcome Autumnal Equinox

I guess time just gets away from me most days but the days are so full that I do not feel like writing at the end of the day.

We have had such overcast dreary days here in Sunny Arizona.  Since I came back from Nebraska,  and with the clouds we have had loads of rain.  Probably well over 6 inches of rain and the rainy season is supposed to be over by now.  If the rain keeps up, the native plants will start to have problems because they are drought centered plants.  Another aspect of all the rain is that the wild flowers have bloomed and filled in all the spaces and it is glorious.

I am glad that we have facetime on our Ipad because it allows us to talk to Sara and family and to see the baby.  He smiles now and is a chubby little guy.  Of course he looks like the other two boys and people will just look at the three of them and say “There goes the Friest Boys”. 

We are both involved with the Family History Center and each Thursday we spend 4 hours in the center helping other folks get their family history done.  Some of them come in with valid questions while once in a while we get a patron who is disappointed that there is no magic button to push to get one’s genealogy to spew out of the system.

Autumnal Equinox:  Well, time has passed again – life is over busy these days.  It is interesting to note that up until today we had very hot days and cooler nights, but the weather seems to know that it is the Autumnal equinox and today is was a day to wear a light jacket.  It is like someone just flipped a switch.

Our Maple tree in the front yard has started to change, and with this crisp air now, it will change drastically.  I love the bright reds and oranges and yellows of its leaves.

I have noticed that there seems to be a whole village of spiders who have taken up residence in our back porch furniture.  They have built their untidy webs everywhere and it matters little whether we break them down  - they just reappear.  These spiders have an unlimited supply of web producing glands to keep up doing what they do.  There are loads of little bundles in their webs – these are the stored food supply for the spiders I suppose, but I observed one of the smaller varieties of birds zoom by and pluck a dainty morsel or two from the webs, leaving an even bigger hole in the untidy mess.

David was up for a visit this weekend and we took him and two friends to a nearby lake where we cooked breakfast.  I love to go to this lake and just sit and watch the water birds come and go.  The lake is pretty full when compared to the holiday weekend at the beginning of the summer when the water level was really far down.  The surface of the water was like glass and someone came by in a canoe and the reflection was classic of the canoe, people and trees that are on the opposite bank.  There were Ducks and Geese and some cormorants moving around the lake.  There used to be a Raptor that nested in the trees on the east side of the lake but I do not know if they are still nesting there.  At another lake nearby there is a Blue Heron that is a resident of the shallow edge.

There is a lady here who orders fruit from some farms in Utah.  I ordered Raspberries that were wonderful and some Tomatoes.  These items are ungraded but they are vine ripened and wonderful – tastier than the ones you buy in the supermarket and quite a bit cheaper.  When we were in Maine, Anne, the lady in the archives office, brought us some special tomatoes that were just as wonderful as these ones in from Utah.  I tried to grow tomatoes this summer but because I was not home to tend the plants, they got leggy and they are not producing very well.  All I want to do is grow Zucchini.  I tried to grow them from seed in the garden and the Quail came in and fed on the new green tender plants.  I re-planted them and either the Quail or some other hungry character came by and ate those too.

 The following year I bought started plants but they got eaten off as well.  So I bought Grow-Boxes and managed to get 3 Zucchini and two yellow squash before I left for Lincoln and when I came home there was nothing left.  I have not been successful as a gardener here in Arizona.  I hope that next Summer I will be able to stay home and tend my garden and get some produce from it.

 David took us to Walmart to see what he could find to spend our money on.  He headed straight for the

electronic section and wanted right or wrong for us to buy him an I-pod touch.  He was at his manipulative best - gave us good reasons why - 1. as an early Christmas Present (12 weeks early) 2. so he could contact us by using Face Tme (he has every electronic device known to man on  his person and is a walking ad for Radio Shack.  He has a cell phone but rarely calls us and never answers our calls to him) 3. It does not cost as much as if  we bought it for him at Best Buy  4. he is tired of using Skype ( we have talked to him no more than 4 times on Skype) 5. It has game aps on it that are excursively Apple products and he wants to play those games.

Number 5 is the winner!

We did not buy the device this weekend and next week does not look good either.

Labor Day Week and Weekend.

Life runs at a feverish pace.  To counter that, we have a bird feeder in the backyard and it is visited by many birds.  I have no idea what their names are but they flutter in and out and provide a distraction from the hustle and bustle of daily life.
This season that we are in  is called the Monsoon Season - primarily because rains come up from the gulf of Mexico and travel up the state of Arizona dropping rain on the desert and causing it to blossom.  The wild sunflowers are spectacular this year and every plant that has ever scattered seeds to the wind has had those seeds germinate and the hills are now quite green.  Of course this has caused flash floods here and there and made life miserable but it is rain and rain is what keeps our plants and animals alive and the creeks run and the lakes fill up.  Unfortunately, a homeless woman drowned in a swollen creek in the center of town.  The report in the paper was rather vague but it is a sad situation that she got washed down stream and drowned.  They reported that she was either bathing or playing in the water and a storm upstream sent a surge down the creek and washed her away. 
Saturday morning I went out for the paper and was struck by the silence of the area.....that is except for the birds welcoming the rising sun.  The air was still and the native cedars were giving off their beautiful clean scent into the air and the moment was magical to me.
The weekend is a three day weekend celebrating Labor Day and signalling the official end of Summer.  All the water parks etc. close down after this weekend to re-open in the Memorial Day weekend at the end of May, next year.The town square is host to a huge craft show this weekend.  We went to it and wandered up and down the alleys.  There seems to be a preponderance of Bead and jewelry booths and a smattering of oil paint and acrylic paint artists and a musician by the name of Patrick Ki plays his music for all to hear.  I stopped by a quilt booth.  The work seemed to be all one person's work and not imported from China as in other years.  The one thing that came across to me from the show was the amount of work these people had put into their wares and the amount of money they have invested in supplies.  With the monsoon showering us almost daily, the crowds do not attend because this is an outdoor show and people do not want to get wet.  The crafters do not do well under these conditions.  There were lots of dog owners out with their pets and as far as I was able to observe there were no altercations between animals - in other years there have been some really good dog fights erupt on the grounds.  Owners trying vainly to calm their pets while the pets just wanted to settle once and for all who was kingpin in the dog world of the courthouse plaza in Prescott, Az.  The biggest dog on the plaza was a Newfoundland.  It looked like a tiny horse.
On Monday this week, we had our monthly gathering of quilters for the Community Quilts effort.  I was surprised to see 30 ladies come out and work.  They pay $3 for Pizza and it is delivered to the facility and we all eat lunch together.  I cannot bring myself to eat the pizza - it does not look good to me.  We have someone bring the breakfast treat, and two people bring salads and about 4 people bring desserts.  This week someone brought individual cheese cakes...........Oooooh! Yummy!
We have loads of fabrics in totes that we open up and the ladies are free to pick whatever they feel they would like to have to work with and they create some wonderful quilts.   Most of the quilts go to the CASA program for the adoptions and we are gearing up for National Adoption Day, November 23.  The CASA adoption day is very festive and the children to be adopted are overjoyed for the chance to become permanent in someone's family.....most of them come from the foster family program.
Friday morning, while Bill was at Computer class at the College, I went to the Bead Show up at the Yavapai Resort.  The man who runs it comes up from Tucson and apparently he does well enough to keep coming back.  We have a new beader in our group named Pam, whom I met at a craft show down on the square a few weeks ago.  I told her about the bead show and she said she would go to it.  I was very happy to see her there and we ogled the beads he had on sale - we also bought some.
Today we talked to Sara and family over the Facetime on the phone.  Ethan told us that he and his Fifth grade class went to see the Salt Dogs play baseball.  It was a good game but filled with lots of problems - a number of students had to be treated for heat exhaustion, one student got hit by a stray ball and Ethan's gymnastic friend was hit in the head by a flying bat.  Do not know how that happened but he got three stitches and will not be doing gymnastics for a few weeks.  He was out of gymnastics for a while this past summer for an injury at baseball - a pitcher sent a wild pitch that hit him in the knee and put him out of commission.
Oliver does soccer at school.  He used to do soccer with a club but with Sara and Jacob both working, it is hard to get the kids to practices etc. so Oliver does soccer at school.   He has lost the two front teeth on the bottom.  When I was out there, I noticed that his new teeth were coming in behind the front teeth so the dentist encouraged Oliver to loosen and then pull out the two baby teeth.
Lyla showed us all the toys that the girls across the street gave her. She is delighted.  These three girls decided to give their toys to Lyla because they consider themselves grown up now and these are for little kids.  Lyla thinks it is better than Christmas.
While we were on the Facetime, baby August woke up and we got to see him.  He is a chubby little guy and he is rather long already.  I guess he will be the tall one in the family.
In sharing time at church today, with the little kids, they had stories about Jesus.  One picture showed how Jesus washed the feet of the disciples.  The thought crossed my mind - What were these men thinking as Jesus was washing their feet?  They had been with him for a couple of years by now and had seen many miracles performed.  This washing of the feet was a first for them and did they really understand what the significance of the ordinance was to them?  They were mere mortals and Christ is half mortal half immortal and it was not until after the Holy Ghost was sent to them later on that they became a force to be reckoned with.  It was a mind boggling thought to be sure but I did not have time to explore it because it was time to take my little brood to class.  Our class time this week was a lesson on how Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers, no matter the language used.  I had six children in my class - 2 regular participants and 4 visitors.  On the holidays one never knows what  or how many class members will be in attendance.