Has anyone watched the movie “Secondhand Lions“?  If not, I highly recommend it.  Great family movie.

The last line of the movie is, “They really lived.”
I hope, when I am 98 yrs old and keel over in my garden, that my great grandchildren say, “Man, that old lady really LIVED!”  What better eulogy could one have?

The summer I turned 19 I had a wonderful roommate who is still one of my dearest friends in the whole wide world.  She and I had a motto.  “Life is an adventure.”  We were two broke college girls living in a garage under a billboard beside a noisy four lane highway.  We could have sat around and complained that our life sucked.  But we chose to have adventures.  Walks in the pouring rain.  Exploring our neighborhood on foot at 2 am, meeting wacky neighbors, seeing how far we could stretch our food budget...

Fast forward just a few years and I was on a different sort of adventure.  I was a young mom who’d just lost a child.  I went on a 3 day women’s retreat with some older gals.  One night we went to an Asian buffet for supper.  My fortune cookie said, “Life to you is a bold and daring adventure.”

I still remember that because I saved that tiny slip of paper for many many years.  I laughed at the perfectness of the fortune and shared it with my old roommate.  And I’ve kept that as my life’s motto now for over 20 yrs.  

Some days my adventures aren’t very big.  Some days they are as simple as standing outside the liquor store, eating a silly icecream treat and breathing in the amazing beautiful smell(to me anyway) of the stockyards across the street.

Some days my adventures are a little bigger and involve getting on an airplane for the first time and flying to a major city I’ve never been to and meeting people I’ve known for years but never met and staying in a  youth hostel.  That was a blast and a trip my then 8th grade daughter will never forget.

Today my adventure was taking my 7 yr old grandson to Burger King and getting lunch.  I know it sounds crazy, but that was a totally new experience for me because I’m not much on fast food and haven’t eaten at bk for maybe 20 years...... oh and I bought shoes.  

So, what adventure have you had lately?  Will anyone say about you, “she really lived“?

I found this in some old emails and thought it worth saving and sharing.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration Independence?                                              

  Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured      

  before they died.                                                        

  Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.                              

  Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two    

  sons captured.                                                            

  Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the            

  Revolutionary War.                                                        

  They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their      

  sacred honor.                                                            

  What kind of men were they?                                              

  Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were    

  farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but    

  they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the    

  penalty would be death if they were captured.                            

  Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships  

  swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties  

  to pay his debts, and died in rags.                                      

  Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move    

  his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and  

  his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and  

  poverty was his reward.                                                  

  Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer,      

  Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.                      

  At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British    

  General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters.  

  He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was    

  destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.                                      

  Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his  

  wife, and she died within a few months.                                  

  John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13  

  children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to  

  waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home  

  to find his wife dead and his children vanished.                          

  So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and        

  silently thank these patriots. It’s not much to ask for the price they    

  paid.                                                                    

  Remember: freedom is never free!

I believe it was our own dear Vikki Hall who posted this quote on FB:

“If you find something beautiful in every day, then at the end of the day, you will be able to say, ‘it was a beautiful day’ and if every day is a beautiful day then at the end of your life you will be able to say ‘it was a beautiful life.”

Ok, I may not have the wording exactly right, but you get the point.

So, I’ve been making an effort to find something beautiful in every day.

Today my beautiful thing was as simple as a hug.

I had a real bad day yesterday for a variety of reasons, and by the time I got to work today at 6:30, it was looking to be the same kind of day.  But I said a cheery “good morning” to each person I saw anyway.

And just when my early morning hour was really falling apart, a co-worker walked by and when I said “Good Morning!” he said, “Well it’s about to get better.” and gave me a great big, much needed hug.  

Awww..... I work with the greatest people.

And it really was a beautiful day.

What makes your day beautiful???

Court is on Tuesday.  Second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, but only the second Tuesday if there aren’t enough things for the judge to bother travelling to the rural court houses for on the fourth Tuesday.

As  you go down the stairs to the courtroom, there is a sign that says firearms are prohibited in the courthouse.  That is all.  No metal detector.  Nobody noticed or cared, including me, that I was still wearing my knife that I have on my belt every day for work.

So, we went with our son to court on Tuesday.  He was sentenced and the sheriff sat him on a bench in the courtroom.  But the next case was a minor, so the courtroom had to be cleared.  That meant our son and us.  So the sheriff sat our boy on the bench in the hall and stood in the door of the courtroom keeping one eye on the boy and one eye on the case at hand.  And fifteen minutes later families were all hugging in the baking sun in front of the courthouse before the two juvenilles got loaded in the sheriff’s Blazer to go to a town big enough to have a jail.

Wow, I just tried to write down some of my thoughts on this particular Mother’s day, and I decided nobody wanted to sit thru reading that many pages of my ramblings.

In a nutshell, I forgot to get my mom a card.  

I got all choked up in church this morning, because I’m grateful for the older women who have mentored me.
Got all choked up in church again because we sang the same song my Sunday school class sang so many years ago at my son’s funeral.
Got all choked up AGAIN because we presented quilts to the graduating seniors and one of those seniors and his older siblings have been very special kids in my life and all three of them were in church today.

Spent part of the afternoon with my parents and aunt and uncle.  Listening to the old stories.  Learning about family history.

In spite of getting only text messages from only half my children, it’s still been a pretty ok day.

I’ve been told, and so I know it must be true....
I am not old enough to be a cougar.  I am merely a puma until June.

Maybe I stayed a little too long at happy hour tongiht too.  But my 25 yr old coworker informed me that I’m not a cougar, just a puma even if I am dating a 19 yr old.

For the record, I don’t think I’m dating a 19 yr old.  After all he has a girlfriend.  However I’m told that since we’ve had three lunches together, that were just he and I—- we‘re dating.

Uhm..... that’s weird.

Especially since three weeks ago one of my other young co-workers was giving me his car keys and debit card.....

My life has gotten weird lately.

No problem with Guiding Light having been cancelled.  I am my own soap opera.