WillThink4Wine

Do any of you have Sisters? If you do, do you have a very close relationship?

I can’t imagine my life without my 3 SisterDears. They know all the worst things about me and they love me anyway! I live about 1500 miles away from them, but through the miracle of technology, we remain very close! Cell phones, email and blogs, gotta love it! Truth be told, with life happening everyday, school, sports, work…. something always happens so they can’t get together all that often. That is until I make my ‘annual trek’ up for our Sister Weekend! We all truly treasure our Sister Weekends.

I’ve been trying to decide when to go up this year. I usually go in July, but every 3-5 years I go up for Christmas. I wouldn’t want to completely forget how much I dislike snow and the bitter cold now would I? I finally decided! I have decided that this year I will go up for the Fall Foliage!! The last time I saw New England Fall Foliage was October 1993, and it was past its peak. So, I have decided to go up at the end of September this year. Plans are being made. Excited? Who me? Only completely!

We’re going to “do” Boston this year! Plans, we must make plans!! Faneuil Hall, The Paul Revere House, The Freedon Trail and Boston Common, the Old North Church, Bunker Hill Monument, the Museums… a Red Sox game!!! We’ll also do some sitting around the fire in our Norman hats sipping wine, listening to the piano and singing along in our relaxing clothes. Bliss!

Stock up the wine! Which restaurants shall we eat at? Decisions, decisions!

Oh, what fun we shall have!

Today is a very special day!

It is SisterDear4’s Birthday and her daughter/my niece’s Leann’s Birthday!

Happy Birthday, SD4! ~ Happy Birthday, Leann!

It’s also my beautiful gray boys’ Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Gandalf & Grayson!

Gandalf is 4 and Grayson is 5! Stop by and wish them a Happy Birthday!

Tags: Family, Simple Pleasures, Sisters

Yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday featured some of the lovely Azaleas here at The Swamp. They are just starting to bloom!

Valdosta, GA is known as “The Azalea City” because of the luxuriant plantings of Azaleas that provide mounds of beautiful blooms in the spring.

If you’re in the Valdosta area, we’ll be having our Annual Azalea Festival March 15 - 16 2008, Free Admission!

Ya’ll come!
 

Tags: Azalea City, Simple Pleasures

1. **MAGGIE AT COFFEE SHOP MAFIA** 2. SandyCarlson 3. Sandy\’s Notes 4. Haydee 5. Urban Observation

6. Untraditional Home 7. Maria 8. Green Me 9. FRANCINE 10. Hootin\’ Anni

11. Jeanna 12. Gabriel 13. Amy Shipp 14. The Little Stuff of Life

Check out the new Wordless Wednesday HQ!!
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Tags: Simple Pleasures, The Swamp, Wordless Wednesday

I used to have a little red plastic suitcase, left over from my childhood sleepovers. It held all my special memories and all my hopes for the future.

That’s where I saved all of the love notes Mr. X wrote to me while we were in Junior High and High School. I also kept all the ticket stubs from movies and concerts, napkins from restaurants, all the little mementos of our 5 years of dating before we got married. It even has some wedding souvenirs in it and some pictures.
When Mr. X and I divorced and I moved out, I had forgotten all about it. It was in the spare bedroom closet. I asked him for it years ago. He’s since remarried, sold the house and moved.

I wonder… What are the odds that he still has it?

Tags: Aging Gracefully, Mr X, Random Thoughts, Simple Pleasures

It was a lovely Christmas morning. Me, my SisterDears and brothers were joyfully opening our gifts. Later in the day we were having a large family gathering, my favorite kind of Christmas! Nana Gert, Auntie Jeanne and her family were coming to have Christmas dinner with us. I had crocheted a peach-colored scarf and hat for Nana and I couldn’t wait for her to open  it!! It was going to be a most wonderful Christmas Day!

I had just opened a gift. It was a brand new 45 that I’d been wanting so badly, Precious and Few by Climax.

The phone rang and MotherDear answered. I heard the most mournful sound come from her mouth. Nana Gert had died during the night at Auntie Jeanne’s. She had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, knitting a last minute gift for somebody. The doctor said she had likely fallen asleep and had a stroke during the night. She never knew anything.

The rest of that day is just a blur, the only other thing I remember from that day is that I went downstairs to the basement and spent the entire day and long into the night crying my heart out. I played that 45 over and over and over again. I literally wore it out, remembering my Nana and missing her so badly it was physically painful.

It was the first time in my life that I realized that I had to treasure each moment with somebody who I love. From that moment, I am always mindful that it might be my last opportunity to share time with them. Because none of ever knows when the last moment in time may come.

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Visit here if you’d like to do your own Message in a Bottle, you do not have to be tagged. I chose to combine mine with a post because Nana Gert was my inspiration for my Message.

Tags: Family, Gatherings, Holidays, Music, Nana Gert, Simple Pleasures, Thought for the Day

175 WORDS CHALLENGE

I met him when we moved into our new house. My cousin told me he lived next door to her. He and his older brother were “volunteered” by my uncle to do some of the heavy lifting.

It was the first time I ever noticed a boy!

He was tall and dark, not at all handsome, unless you think dorky and be-speckled is handsome. He was the second oldest in his family of six. I found myself doing stupid things in front of him, tripping, stumbling, dropping, tongue tied and talking too much. I was in crush.

As tired as I was that day, I was sad to see it end because that meant he had to leave my house. I wondered if I’d ever see him again, maybe at my cousin’s house. I wondered if he felt any of the same feelings.

We slept that night on mattresses on the floor. Morning came and my MotherDear came in to wake us for breakfast. She lifted my blanket and said to me “That boy is downstairs asking for you.”

• 175 Words
• 917 Characters

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ARE YOU UP FOR THE CHALLENGE? YOU CAN DO IT!
DIRECTIONS FOR THE CHALLENGE:

Firstly, click on the link provided below. While there at the site, type your life’s event in the box provided. Total your words. Your entry MUST meet the challenge of 175 words!! NO LESS!!!! Must be 175 words at least!! If it’s not, it doesn’t qualify. Then, copy and paste your life’s event to your blog and place your total of words - the exact count into your blog entry also. That’s it!

If you want to try the challenge go to Hootin Anni’s HERE.

I’d like to know you’ve done the meme challenge for fun. If you do, please come back and tell me in the comments section!! I’ll come by for a visit.

Tags: Mr X, Random Thoughts, Simple Pleasures

Wine is both pleasing to my palate and soothing to my spirit.

Being the wine-lover than I am, I have to say that in my view there is very little that can’t be improved upon simply by pairing it with a nice glass of wine. Reading a book, a small gathering of family & friends, a quiet evening on the sofa, wine chats with the SisterDears, an airplane flight and even blogging all go well with a nice glass of wine.

Planning a great meal? Pair it with a nice wine that will compliment your food. The right wine actually makes the food taste better, and vice-versa. My best advice to new wine drinkers: Give yourself permission to ignore the white meat, white wine/red meat, red wine rule. If you like it, that’s all that really matters. Personally, I drink reds almost exclusively.

Panic Disorder

I have suffered from Panic Disorder since my early teenage years. Of course, at the time I didn’t know what it was, but I found that if I stayed busy cleaning, it helped a lot. Fortunately, being the oldest of eight children, there was always something to clean!

I also realized that if I allowed myself to become over-tired I was more susceptible to having an Attack. That’s just one of the reasons I try to be in bed by 8:00 every night… That, and when I’m well-rested, I also tend to be in a better mood and therefore less apt to bite someone’s head off!

When I first discovered my love of wine, I also discovered a wonderful Perk! Not only did it taste wonderful, but it relaxed me like nothing else ever had!

I have written before that I have a Love/Hate relationship with flying. I love that it can transport me so quickly to someone I wish to spend time with, but I hate that it also will trigger a Panic Attack.

It’s Wine-Thirty somewhere!

Not long after 9-11, I booked the only available flight into SisterDear2’s airport. It happened to be a very early morning flight, which meant I would not have my coping mechanism available. I finally decided to make an appointment with the doctor. I was hoping for a “magic pill” that I could take for the flight up and back. To make a long story short, he told me to disregard the time of the flight. Since wine works so well for me I was to imagine myself to be an International Traveler - and it was Cocktail hour somewhere! That’s how I got my tagline “It’s Wine-thirty somewhere!”

I’ll admit that I felt a little creepy ordering wine so early in the morning, but I’m so glad I did! In fact, I ordered several of those teeny tiny wine bottles! I had a wonderful flight, and while my fellow passengers may have thought me an alcoholic, they were blissfully unaware of the consequence of being in close proximity of a strapped-in woman in the midst of a full-blown Panic Attack! For three hours!!

Bye-Bye Paxil, Hello, Cabernet!

Tags: Panic Attacks, Panic Disorder, Simple Pleasures, Wine