This week it’s all about friends!
A week of friends – It’s been a challenging week but some meet-up with friends soothed everything. One group met for dinner. We laughed. Big deep belly laughs. Laughter is a healer but it’s hard to laugh alone.
The game night crowd – Finishing off the friend week, we met some game friends. A little competition and a lot of food do wonders.
A friend sends the promise of spring – It’s not the weather but a blogger friend send me a jumping frog (no, not a real one) that made me laugh. Made the cats jump too and that made me laugh.
It’s a small world – A few weeks back I realized that one of my exercise buddies had been a teacher at my step-kids school many years ago. She had one of them in class. My step-daughter remembered her (fondly). This week I found out her sister worked at the same company I did at the same time. It is a large company so it’s not unusual that we never crossed paths but it is indeed a small world.
Be thankful for what you have – The two sisters in the above paragraph moved to my area as adults. I asked how they got here and why. They were raised in the poor rural south. Two parents and three kids lived in a four-room house without running water. This wasn’t in the 1800s. They are my age. I am very grateful for where I lived and what I have. I don’t remember a time without running water although I remember when my Mom got her first spiffy porcelain sink. She was over the moon. We have come so far and take so much for granted.
So how was your week?
Days with laughter, especially belly laughs, are the best.
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There aren’t enough of them!
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Sounds like a perfect week to me!
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In some ways it was.
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Oh my! A porcelain sink. What did you have before that? I remember when people starting getting stainless steel, but I thought porcelain had been around quite sometime! Are the cats afraid of the frog or are they interested in it?
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I don’t remember what was there before. Maybe it was just a very old porcelain sink or galvanized steel.
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Notice how those old fashioned farmhouse sinks are back in style? The circle of life haha.
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My mother would laugh.
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Happy Monday sweet friends! XOXO – Bacon
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Happy spring to you!
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When my mom was nine, her dad lost his job. He decided that he would walk the twenty miles to the nearest welfare office to try and sign his family up. Instead of getting help, he contracted typhoid. While my grandfather was dying, the authorities came in and took my mom and her sisters and slapped them in the county home. Though the loss of her father left a huge scar, Mom still has fond memories of a kind lady in the home bringing her a bowl of peaches and a slice of butter bread. What a special meal it was for a little girl who had seen a lot of hunger. She felt like a queen feasting in such luxury. She was so thankful.
Our Sunday dinner today included Belgium waffles, strawberries, blueberries, and whipped topping, sausage, and a cheesy ham and hash brown casserole. All of that food, and our gang wasn’t half as thankful as that little girl had once been for a few peaches and a slice of bread. You’re right. We take far too much for granted.
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What a story. My mother’s Dad died when she was 9 too. He died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Really hard times. We are not grateful enough. Most of us don’t know hunger. Thanks for sharing your story.
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I think spring is about here and I am so ready. Laughing is the best. When my brother was sick one of the things I missed the most was his laughter. I still miss his silliness and he has been gone twelve years.
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Today is spring but we are still snow covered from last weeks snowstorm. I am so ready! It is really hard to be upbeat when your health isn’t good. I always thought “old” people were just cranky. Now I find out they probably didn’t feel good.
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This week I met with two of my three sisters and three of my seven brothers! We had so much fun with lots of laughing. I guess we all have the same sense of humour! Still smiling.
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I know just enough of your family to envision that scene. Good times!
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Laughter with friends is the best. And, even better, is when we laugh about shared experiences from long ago. I have a friend that I’ve known since before I could walk… we still laugh about the stupidest stuff that only we find funny (our husbands just look at us like we are crazy… we are). Love the frogs!
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Laughter is great. I don’t have many friends from my childhood or even school. I do have great friends from my working years though. We giggle a LOT!
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Materially, we have come so far. But when it comes to friends, we are still where our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents . . . were. We need them and they can’t be bought.
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Well said!
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Love your frogs . . . and that you found laughter with your buddies (and from watching your cats being startled by your jumping frog)!
Hope Spring is in your backyard again soon.
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Me too!
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Friends, Frogs and Fun. Keep laughing Kate 💛
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All “f” words!
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Feeling fine 💛
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and fabulous!
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I agree — a big, deep belly laugh with friends is simply the best!
PS – Speaking of the above, I began laughing at the picture of your wind-up frog before I even read your post. There is definitely something about him!
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He’s sitting on my desk right now winking at you!
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Love your frog. I was not ready for Spring until the last snowstorm. I’m ready now.
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Oh I’m so ready!
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Love the cute frogs!
Laughing with friends is awesome!! And you are so right, we do take so much for granted!!
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Love the frogs too! Can’t wait to see my own.
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Laughter with friends is the best! It lingers long after the actual event. I am sorry I never talked with my grandmother more about her past. My mom’s mom was the only grandparent alive when I was born and though I remember her well and she lived with us for a time, I never sat down and had conversations with her about her history. I wasn’t old enough to realize how important it would be.
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Me too with my mom. My grandparents were gone by the time I was old enough to ask questions. Sometimes I think older people with self-absorbed children should put something together either written or audio because one day their kids will want to know!
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Sometimes I forget how great it is to laugh. And then a cat falls off the scratching post and pretends they meant to do that, and I remember.
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Laughing and crying are two great things to release tension. I have been having trouble crying the past few years (except when a cat dies — Freud would have a field day with that) so laughing it is.
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Getting together with friends, especially ones who’ve known you when you were a kid, is the best. I love the frog photos!
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Old (tenured!) friends are best.
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Tenured friends! I like that. 🙂 – Marty
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Well…I hate to call my friends old even if they are!
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Laughing with friends is the best! Well, besides enjoying good FOOD with friends. CH and I did some yard work yesterday and it smelled so good out there. Much needed rain shower coming down this morning!
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I was outside a few weeks back when we had the unseasonably warm weather and it was wonderful. Now I am again cooped up inside. We are expecting some warming this week but only to seasonal. Nothing to write home about but way better than snowstorms in March.
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my week was as green as those frogs 🙂
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*so jealous* I read your posts of the balmy weather in Dublin.
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Could do with a little bit of balminess after being soaked through yesterday – but even so it was a magical day
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Ah…. you triggered memories of the 5 of us (Parents + 3 kids) living in a 40ft caravan. One chemical toilet (we learned to share!) and bath time meant waiting for a tin bath to be filled with warm/hot water (all heated in pans on a gas stove)! 🙂
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OMG! Gotta go say a prayer in my bathroom!
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The things we so easily take for granted today… and how we complain when they don’t work properly! 🙂
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I wish I would have asked my mother more about her life when she was alive. I know that there were no “true” Christmas presents. There were 9 kids. They got citrus fruit and nuts in their stockings. If they needed a sweater they got yarn. I know her house was the first in the town to get electricity. There was a cistern for water right outside the house. The house did not have central heat. The upstairs was cold and the kids would dress in front of the downstairs cooking range. Her Dad died when she was 9 and there were no government programs to help. The older sons worked and turned their money over to their Mom (can you see that happening today?) and they gardened for food. They all survived very well.
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Even our first home (mid 1950’s) only had heat downstairs (it was supposed to “rise” to heat the upstairs! That heat was via hot water radiators, and the hot water tank was heated by a coal fire. i.e. you want hot water in the summer, you plan ahead! Those were the standards of the times and, while today’s standard of living is wonderful, so much appreciation and respect for just the basics has been lost
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We had coal heat. You had to shovel it in and clean out ashes. We had that until the early 60s when my mother bought an automatic stoker. It shoveled the coal into the burner as long as you kept the coal on top of the coil. Still had to clean out ashes. Dirty, dirty job. Today’s kids would call this camping.
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They would probably also call it 3rd World living! (I won’t mention the post-WWII food rationing in England, and using coupons to get your allowance of necessities (food!)
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Fortunately I missed that.
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Well we knew no different. We (us kids) got our 1 little bottle of orange juice once a week, and we may eat meat at weekends! We walked, or biked, everywhere… and always ate what we were given (mainly due to the lack of options)! 🙂
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I get that. You don’t miss what you don’t know.
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I stop every so often, and remember doing without. It really helps keep today, with all I have, in perspective.
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Ron, you said it. We complain about stuff our parents never dreamt of.
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That flipping frog never looked better. Taking things for granted…The Random 5 and I are linked, I’m convinced. How often am I in the random throes of something that randomly appears in your top 5.
I’ve been licking my wounds over a few things and to get myself out of self-pity mode, I’ve been counting my blessings…like how I have heat and hot water every day…not like in the old place when it was hit or miss. I now can get a package delivered without having it sent by way of Phil the shoemaker…we have doormen now who take it for you.
One of my favorite writers, Jimmy Breslin, died. He was 86. He wrote to the very end. Inspiration…another blessing.
Love your list. always inspiring…like Jimmy…ribbit…ribbit
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The brink of season change is never a good time for me. Mostly because it’s never smooth. I’m into warm weather and wap, it’s snows and I am in a funk. I need something solid. Spring is always fickle.
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You said it, that hussy spring.
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Partying in the islands.
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Ya mon!
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or shopping at Neimans.
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