College Roommates and Retail Therapy

My college roommate drove over from the big city yesteday to spend the night at our house and to take a "breather" from the stress at her house .  

Why is it that the minute we get together, we forget we're in our mid-forties with responsibilities and kids with bedtimes, and start thinking we're 19 again?  We giggle like little kids, and as you might imagine, my kids and husband immediately start rolling their eyes... We stayed up well past my normal middle-aged bedtime, and shared a pretty good bottle of wine...

We don't care.  It's all funny to us.  Sometimes you just need a good dose of silly to set the world right again.  Or at least it works for us.  And if a dose of goofy roommate doesn't do it, there's always "retail therapy."  But in this economy, who can really get some good quality therapy in the mall?  Not us, so we just went to the Dollar Store!!!  About $100 later, we both felt pretty darn good.  And we have some incredible treasures that we're planning to bestow on some really special friends...(people should be getting nervous about now...)

All I have to say is, good friends are a blessing.  After 25 years, it's good to know I've got somebody outside of my family, that knows me well enough to laugh with me and at me, and still likes me enough to carve out time to keep the friendship going.

Blackberry Winter Strikes

It was 48 degrees this morning when I woke my sons up for their last Tuesday of school for 2009.  And since one of them had morning detention at 7:15 for an un-tucked shirt (who is really being punished?  ME!  I had to get up at 5:45 to get him out the door and still get son #2 to school at the regular time...)  But I digress... it was really cold considering we've been in the lower 80s for a couple of weeks now.  

My mom and dad are visiting for my sweet daughter's high school graduation, so I got my dad's perspective on this cold snap...he says it's Blackberry Winter.  What in the world is a Blackberry Winter, you ask?  According to the Appalachian folklore handed down for generations and eventually to my Daddy, it's a cold snap that comes around the time that blackberries are in bloom,  usually in early to mid May, and it sets the buds on the canes to insure a good crop of blackberries.  Sounds reasonable to me.  And to think, I thought it had something to do with a PDA freezing up...

And it brings back so many memories of blackberry pickin' in the Dog Days of Summer...which I will now have to ask my Daddy what that is...  My guess is that the Dog Days of Summer are those hot days when you wish you were a dog, just laying under the porch in the shade, or finding a creek to offer some relief. 

No matter.  I'm just loving spending time with my mom and dad and hearing their southern sayings and southern wisdom and wives tales while reflecting on the next generation's passing through life so quickly... I'll just put on a sweater.