Tag Archives: Senior Living

The Days Go By

25 Apr

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Image by Prettysleepy from Pixabay

Books surround me. I like novels for women and Christian books that give me a deeper walk with our dear Lord. I would have thousands of books if I had kept them all, but thank heaven, I learned that you have to take the clutter down at least a bit, or you go bonkers.

I have a collection of Maeve Binchy’s books, another collection of Gene Stratton-Porter, and one of D. E. Stevenson. I have the four novels I wrote and published with Amazon. 

Today I was at the church Book Chat. This church has a lovely small library, and we read books and get to talk about them and ourselves once a month. Some of us are hard of hearing, and others can’t remember the words they want to say. It has been a life-saver even though only four ladies were attending during the worst times of the Covid. Today we had nine, and we filled the whole hour with our opinions on the characters and how they might relate to our own lives. 

It’s common knowledge that when you are elderly, you need to keep your spirits up by getting out and meeting with people. 

Image by Q K from Pixabay

Writing in a journal is one way to sort things out and cheer up.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Next week we plan to visit a restaurant that hosts Mariachis and supplies Tex/Mex food. I like 1 Taco. Bill likes other things and usually brings home enough for two more meals.

At home, we have a yard with a yardman who does us the honor of coming to weed and help us with our yard. He now has a big black dog that was left alone out in a field for a large part of her life. She is sweet. When she comes over with him, we keep her in the backyard so she won’t get into any trouble, but one thing has been difficult, she loves to dig and has done quite a bit of it. We have replaced the dirt, and we think we have found out why she needed those holes. They are cool when you are big and need a nap, so you make your bed in them. We now have a plant to let her sleep the morning away in our airconditioned shed.

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

Tags: , ,

Paw Prints

7 Aug

SUNDAY MEMORIES

 Judy Wills

 

 Fred and I have arrived at the point in our lives where several things have happened:

1… I no longer cook as often – nor do I desire to

2…we both thoroughly enjoy eating out often

Consequently, servers at a bunch of restaurants and eateries know us by name, and smile at us when we enter their establishments. I don’t want to say that they fight over who will get to serve us, but they all seem eager. We must tip well…..

One of our favorite restaurants is Cracker Barrel™. We enjoy their food – just good old country home-style cooking. Their prices are reasonable, and the same food for the same price is for both lunch and supper. Since we have cut down on how much we eat, since we are older, we are pleased to find that we can order from the “kids” menu, as it is advertised as for “kids of all ages.” And it includes a drink with it. We have had several servers suggest that we get two kids meals instead of the same thing off the main menu and split it, as it would be cheaper for us. That says a lot about the integrity of the place, to us. And keeps us coming back.

But there is another aspect of Cracker Barrel™ that we enjoy – and that is the “store” part of the restaurant. I have purchased several t-shirts from there, and they are always top quality material. I’ve purchased other clothing for our grandchildren there, and found the quality to be quite good. They have some of the fun, old-time toys that we played with as children, still available.

So all-in-all, we find our experiences at Cracker Barrel™ restaurant to be most enjoyable.

Some years ago, as I was perusing items in the “store,” I saw something that really caught my eye. It was a 6″ square tile, or plaque, of an animal paw print. Fascinating! One was of a grizzly bear cub (unbelievable how huge a cub’s paw print is!!), and the other was a grey wolf. I purchased the grey wolf paw print, with the intention of purchasing the grizzly cub print soon thereafter. However, as with most things you see in stores – if you don’t get it right then, it probably won’t be there the next time – and the grizzly cub paw print was gone when I next looked for it. I was so disappointed.

Fast forward a year or two, and we went on our first cruise with Fred’s family to Alaska (please see my blog of November 11, 2012 titled Our First Cruise). Our final stop was in Anchorage, where we celebrated Fred’s dad’s 86th birthday before departing for our respective homes the following day. As I was browsing through a gift shop in the hotel, low-and-behold – there was the grizzly cub tile!! I snapped it up as fast as I could – I wasn’t going to let it get away from me this time!

So now they sit proudly on a shelf in our house, and I am amazed by them, each time I look upon them, and thank God that I was able to gather these “things” to myself for nothing more than enjoyment.

Such a fun memory for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , , ,