Good Weekend!

        I had such a nice weekend.  I had cookies, chocolate chip cookies!  I know, it doesn't take much to make me happy.  :) Pinterest has just driven me crazy with photos of desserts.  I want them all!   When my kids were home I tried to have a well balanced, home cooked dinner and a dessert every night.  Yes, too much dessert, but none of us is obese so I guess it wasn't too bad.  After the kids grew up I quit making desserts because with just me at home it was up to me to eat the whole thing, which I gladly did.  It is just easier to not have those kinds of things in the house than resist the temptation to just chow down. Anyway, my grandsons spent an afternoon with me so we had chocolate chip cookies. Not exactly home baked, unless you count taking them out of the package and putting the pre-made squares on the cookie sheet and baking, but they were sooooooo good.   My grandson's 10th birthday is next week so my youngest daughter,Casey, grandsons Mason, Travis and I went shopping this weekend.  I told Travis with the price of gas and everything else I can't afford to go into town shopping more than once this week so I would let him pick out what he really wanted.  Travis wanted an easel, paints and art paper.  I told him I could not afford an easel, even with my coupon from Michael's, but we would look.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a little one suitable for him for under $10.  It thrills my heart that he wants to paint.  My younger son, Trey, and I taught ourselves to paint .... somewhat .... by reading library books of course .... oh, about 15 years ago.  We used watercolors and enjoyed it so much.  Trey was a pretty decent artist.  I have always loved to draw and later paint but life got so busy I just put it away and haven't done either in a very long time.  Thus, I am delight to see Travis is interested in art as well.  I let Travis set up his paper and easel, open his tempera paints and paint to his heart's content, then we packaged it all back up so I could put it in a recycled gift bag for him to open at his birthday.  (thank you for my birthday bag, Linda---it was the perfect size)  LOL!   That is just the way I roll!  Life is short....what if I get run over by a bus this week and missed out on the painting that is now on my fridge?!?!?   My grandsons and I then got on the computer and looked at all of the things I had repinned on Pinterest to my board "Things to Do With My Grandkids."  We picked out a few crafts to do next weekend.  They will be spending Friday night with me so on my way home from babysitting sometime this week I have to stop at Dollar Tree for a couple of things I don't have on hand. That makes me happy to do crafts with them.   

     I read a couple of cozy mysteries and I just love them.  Not so deep that my depression fogged mind can't handle.  I love reading. 

     I played around on Pinterest alot.  I can't explain my enjoyment with Pinterest.  It just relaxes me so much, I truly enjoy looking at everyone's boards.  Am I ever going to do those crafts? The adult ones, probably not but it doesn't hurt to think maybe someday.  The kid ones? I will probably do every single one I have pinned with Mason, Travis or Taylor eventually.  The quilts I have pinned? I would be making a quilt right now except it is a horribly expensive hobby, so, no, I am pretty sure that won't ever happen.  Do I love looking at those quilted pieces of art? You bet.  My garden board? My yard will never, ever look like those.  I live in a drought ridden, windblown area and the water it would take to make it green would just cost too much, but I can dream! :)  I have a board called "Every house should have a porch."  It gets repinned often.  I am soooo lucky to have this cheap single wide trailer I live in that came with two metal and wood sets of steps... literally 3 steps at the door and the likelihood of me ever living anywhere else is nil.  Having one of the porches from my board? Never gonna happen but I would love a porch, I dream of a porch, I have just a sliver of a glimmer of hope.   I think that is what Pinterest is. It just comes down to hope ... and without hope things are pretty bleak.  Do I hope someday to have a beautiful yard? Yes.  I mean, alot of people here DO have beautiful yards. I just enjoy looking a beautiful things, even if I know I can't have them.   

       This weekend I enjoyed exchanging a few emails with a friend I used to work with at the library.  It was good to hear from her and I enjoyed her catching me up on her life since we last emailed maybe two weeks ago.  On a friend's blog I got into a discussion on social media.   I grew up back in the olden days when we wrote letters, stuffed them in an envelope and stuck it in the mailbox.   I love hand written letters but email is so nice in that it is instant, or close.  During my teenage years I spent hours on the phone and then up until about 15 years ago I used to get on the phone with a girlfriend after her husband went to bed and we could talk for 2 or 3 hours easily, but I can't hear well enough on the phone anymore.  Anyway, the point is, having grown up with written letters my main social contact, and then email for over 50 years it is not weird to me to consider that as "visiting with friends" and just as valuable to me as seeing them in person.  Actually for me, more valuable.  I HATE to go to restaurants with people because of my hearing impairment (well, there is also that can't afford a restaurant thing).  With the background noise there is no way in heck I can understand what anyone is saying, even when I wore hearing aides.  Add music and it is truly impossible.  It is just a frustration with a capital F.  If you read lips that means that they have to be facing you, preferably without food in their mouth, for you to understand.  If you have 3 or more people around the table they can't all be looking right at you when they answer someone else.  It is just soooo frustrating I will not do it if at all possible.  I would love to go to a movie if I could afford it but without captioning it is a waste of my time and another frustrating experience.  Plays? I used to love to go to plays at the college here.  A couple of times I was able to see a play at the Amarillo Little Theater and I absolutely loved it but again, now, with my hearing impairment it would not a fun evening.  Sitting in some one's living room visiting?  The only way I can keep up is if someone sits next to me and every time someone says something the person next to me faces me and tells me what they said.  I do with my family but other than that, I would really rather just be home, reading an email, instant messaging or a blog.  It just works for me (and I can wear my pj's).  Driving around going somewhere? I can not understand the people in the back seat if I am in the fron,t and talking to the driver?-- not good since I need them to face me.  I'm happy with email  but I guess I am weird.  The discussion I had with a person on a blog..... was this person stressing the importance of real, live, in-your-presence-friends vs social media friends.  She had many good points.  We also touched briefly on the age of friends, kinda.  LOL! I am 58  but at work and at church I enjoyed people of all ages and it never crossed my mind that I might be old enough to be their mother, or gasp, grandma maybe.  My friends from the library, my co-workers and the ones I laughed til I cried with almost daily, my partners in crime there, truly my friends, were almost always somewhere between 10 and 30 years younger than me.  There were several closer to my age, and some older than me, that I just treasured but we were all friends.  We had a really good time together and some of them still email me and keep me posted on their lives, whether they have young children or empty nests.  One of my closest buddies at the last branch I worked at had her first baby the year I retired.  She is the one who has invited me to get together most often.  I found nothing weird about the fact that we considered, and still do, each other friends.  Once you are an adult I just see everyone as "adult."  Once at church in a women's group .... I was about 38 and this other woman was probably 58 ... this woman said the truth is everyone once they hit about 35 mentally feel that age the rest of their life.  Physically they don't but mentally they do.  As I have aged I have thought about her saying that and for me it is true. 
        OK, a poll ....
1)  how often do you see friends in person, outside of work, in a week? 
2)  Do you have friends that you enjoy visiting with that are much younger or much older than you? 
3)  Which do you do more of in a week...email friends, talk to them on the phone, or see socially?  
4)  If you had an errand to run, not an emergency but something you needed to do, in the middle of a weekday how many people could you call to ask for a ride, and get a "yes they could help", if you didn't have transportation?

        Okay, that is my rambling on and on for the evening.  I apologize for going on and on and on and on.  Please leave a comment of some kind or the other and everybody have a good week! :)
and my responce to the poll is:   1) other than family, zero usually    2)yes   3)email   4) other than family, zero
Oh, and according to my counter, typically 35 or so people will read this blog in the next 24 hours.  I suspect at most 3 people will respond to my poll so ... please, prove me wrong!!!!!