25 things I love...

In no particular order:

1. A fresh pedicure
2. Coffee
3. The sausage breakfast burrito at Sonic
4. Good stationary
5. Merlot
6. BMW 325i
7. Chewy candy
8. Frank Lloyd Wright architecture
9. The beach
10. My job
11. Michael Buble
12. My son's artwork
13. Text messaging
14. Facebook
15. Kate Spade handbags
16. Pigs in a blanket
17. Italy
18. John Steinbeck novels
19. Food TV
20. Keeping my car clean
21. My annual vacation with just the girls
22. Aquariums
23. Toasty bagels with cream cheese
24. Roller skating
25. Spicy perfumes

Are any of your favorites on my list? What are some of yours?

Arlene

My mom died. July 9, 2009. My mom was a lot of things to a lot of people...daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and friend, definitely a friend. She was Switzerland when it came to friendship! She loved everyone equally whether they loved each other or not! She had a lot of practice being a mediator - my dad and I have very strong personalities so she spent a lot of time running interference between the two of us - but never made either of us feel like we had lost the negotiations!

My mom was one of 10 kids who married an only child. She sometimes regretted marrying at 20, but stayed married for almost 59 years. She wanted me to see more and do more than she had done...and yet she had managed to do a lot in her life. She once went to Las Vegas at midnight in a convertible with my dad and some friends, just because. She took helicopter rides, rode skateboards, hung out on Padre Island at spring break and started drinking at 10:00 am in Mexico because I needed company!

She kept these journals...not a "Dear Diary" kind of thing but these general info journals that started in the 1960s. Interested in when I bought my first car or when they repainted the living room or I came home for a long visit when I lived in New York? It's in there. Wanna know what she paid for a new microwave in the 1980s? Check. My brother's minor in possession bust and college graduation are in there as well. A wealth of odd family information. These are the only things of hers that I truly wanted, there are probably a dozen of them. Seeing her handwriting, knowing she was thinking of her family as she wrote each entry...that's what's important to me. I've started reading them and laugh over some of the stuff that's in there that I had totally forgotten! Melissa...did you know I paid you $500 for the Datsun? I can even tell you what day it was!

I will miss her every day, but WOW she was an incredible woman and I was blessed to be her daughter! Love you Mom!

Unsure

I'm getting older. No particular news flash there since we are all getting older every day BUT I'm feeling my age more and more these days. It doesn't particularly help that all the other moms of Kyle's 8-year-old friends are just turning 30ish. And me? I'm 42. Things seem to take more effort and I find myself weighing the effort involved vs the outcome. Six Flags in July...not so much. Street festival? Maybe. See what I mean? I catch myself throwing a bit of a pity party now and again about my flagging energy in comparison to the other moms. How I don't particularly want to be out past 11:00 or deal with drama. I had older parents...they were in their mid-to-late 30s when I was born and there were good things and bad about that - we didn't really have money woes since my parents were well-established financially which allowed us the opportunity to travel and have some things other kids didn't have. But, my parents were tired. LOL...I just self - analyzed myself with that one...I'm becoming the parent I didn't really want to become!

So, as I sit here on 4th of July I'm really working up the energy to gather our stuff, head downtown, deal with traffic, find a parking spot, find a decent place to watch the fireworks (read "avoid rednecks") and then deal with the slow moving traffic jam after the finale. But hey, you're only young once!