Old Broads

Old Broads

Monday, July 25, 2011

FRIENDS! THIS GIRLFRIEND IS ALWAYS READY FOR A GOOD TIME

I met Margaret soon after I moved here and she has brightened my life so much.  Margaret is a funny, funny lady with a wacky sense of humor.  She has had me cracking up more often than not and is one of my most treasured friends.

I think the custom has been completely forgotten now, but especially in the south, the entire family would go to the cemetery and pull weeds, leave flowers and generally clean up the grave site of a passed loved one.  I remember going and doing this for my grandparents gravesite when I was little.  Our parents also admonished us not to walk on a grave because it was disrespectful and if we had to cross one to do so at the foot, never the head.  This caused so many traumas for me because I could never remember if the gravestone was at that person’s head or feet so I usually tried to walk on the little area between graves and if I had to cross, I jumped over very quickly. 

 Me & Margaret


Margaret was telling me that her family was at the cemetery when she was about 12 years old and ignoring her parent’s warnings about walking on the graves, she and her sister were just generally running amuck.  They were having a great time until Margaret stepped in a gopher hole and fell on top of a grave scaring her to death. She said she couldn’t get up fast enough, that she just knew that a hand was going to reach up and grab her and drag her down into the hole.



Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Friday, July 22, 2011

WHY GALS ARE BEST FRIENDS AND NOT MEN!!!

I was getting a trim a couple of weeks ago and my beautician who is a young, beautiful woman was complaining to me about her “significant other”.  She said that after three years of living together that he seemed to be changing and NOT for the better.  I gave her all my worldly advice on the subject and she looked at me like I’d gone bonkers.  But for better or worse, here it is: 

The man you marry is not the man you dated.  Right gals, they change from that sweet, loving, do anything for you handsome guy who makes your heart flutter to a demanding, slobby lump parked in front of the TV.  That guy who would take you anywhere and do anything for you now complains about taking out the trash and going “almost” anywhere.  No siree, not when there’s a game on the tube.  And don’t get me started on guys and their remotes – that could take days.

Second marriages; you think they are going to work great because the first wife trained them.  Surprise, guys get remarried because somebody has to finish raising them.

Why are men like this?  Because women are from venus, men are from stupid!

Okay, enough man bashing even though I was only half teasing.  Seriously, I know that there are some really good men out there who love their wives and children, my son in law being one of them.  I’m not trying to influence anyone’s thinking about men, I’m just saying that my experience with men has been a bust and I’m done with all that. I guess what it amounts to is that I am not willing to risk my heart or my sanity again.
What I really told her was:  You’re not going to notice it so much now because young women have so much competition going on with men, clothes, jobs or whatever.  But when you are older women are your absolute best friends.  I never get bored with the gals, we have fun doing whatever and if conversation ever slows (Yeah right!) all you have to mention is your surgery, kids, or pets and get them going again.  If you ever try doing that with a guy you’ll find not only that it doesn’t work but he looks at you like you have finally gone over the rainbow!

A couple of years ago a local theater was featuring the play Menopause.  I started making calls and ended up with about 32 women to take in the show.  We laughed all through the performance and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.  Then, we went out to eat, of course.

Women are the most caring, considerate creatures on earth and I thank God every day for my friends and my family.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

FRIENDS ADVICE – NOT!

I was so happy because I thought my legs were finally healing.  Then Tuesday I got carried away and spent too long in the shower, the result being, when I was drying off I got a little rough with the towel and one of the scabs came off of my leg – OUCH!   So now I have another big hole in my leg – Icky!

Fawn decided that I needed to keep my leg dry and came up with the idea of wrapping the sore part of my leg with Saran Wrap while showering so of course this morning I tried it.  As I was getting in the shower I got to thinking that the Saran Wrap could come off without me knowing it and plug up the drain, hey, maybe I could even drown.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained so I hopped in the shower and guess what?  The ?*&*@% stupid Saran Wrap got wet and slid off of my leg.

So of course I called Fawn and told her that her bright idea didn’t work.  She was quiet for awhile and then said, “Well, did you remember to wrap it in duct tape?”
 
I honestly don’t know what I would do without my oh so helpful friends. ***


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Friday, July 15, 2011

NOT SO FUNNY - HOW I SPENT MY 2010 SUMMER OR GALS, DON’T GO THERE

Now don’t expect a tale about cruising the Caribbean or a dashing romance ‘cause it just didn’t happen.  This was the summer of the “OUCH!” and the “My God that’s ugly!” and the “Is it ever going to get better!” 
I am a California girl, woman, (old broad) and I have worn shorts all of my life.  Now before you say “Euyouh” let me tell you that I have always had some pretty fine looking legs.  In fact, my legs have always been my best feature.  Seriously! 
A couple of years ago I began to get some really ugly varicose veins on my legs On May 24th I went to the doctor to and they shot a solution into the veins which is, no take that back, was suppose to clear them up.  I came home in those ugly thigh high compression hose and had to wear them for 3 days straight.  On the fourth day I could finally take them off, take a shower and put on the knee-high compression hose and wear them for several weeks.  “Well,” I foolishly thought, “This hasn’t been too bad.”
A couple of weeks later I noticed that some of the places where they “shot” me started looking like blood blisters and one morning when I put on the knee-highs they pulled the top off of these blisters and bled all over my stockings.  Oh goody!  Now not only can’t I wear the stockings but also I have to put band-aids on my legs.  After they quit bleeding, I took off the band-aids and started using antibiotic cream on those spots and they kept getting worse and worse so back to the doctor I went.  I thought the compression hose had caused the sores; he disagreed and said that sometimes the gook they shoot into the veins gets into the surrounding skin and causes an allergic reaction.  He told me that I was looking at all summer to get it cleared up.  Whoopee!  A whole summer, well how bad can that be?
Flash forward to July and I am back at the doctor because my legs are not getting any better.  He decided to open up the sores and dig around a little but promised me he would quit when I told him to.  Ha!  I was yelling, “Stop, it hurts!”  “Stop, it hurts” Finally I yelled “I said to stop it hurts like hell!”  He probably thought that I was going to smack him and the thought did cross my mind (several times) so he finally quit and advised me that it wasn’t “that” bad.  I said, “Okay Doc, you climb up on this table and give me that sharp pointy thing and I’ll show you how it hurts”. 
Another week goes by and there is no improvement so I called and got an internal antibiotic for 7 days and then another one for 10 days and yet again, another appointment when he told me that it wasn’t going to take all summer at all that it should look a lot better in another month.  I told him “Duh!”  When he looked at me questioningly I told him that it had already been two months and another month would make three so that was pretty much ALL SUMMER!
Now we are in August and I still can’t let any sun get on my leg because it burns like crazy and I can’t wear long pants because even the softest cloth rubbing against it HURTS!  AND I AM SO SORRY THAT I HAD THIS PROCEDUE!
I’m sharing this story and the (gross) pictures so that if you are thinking about having the shots in your veins, then you might want to think again, and again, and again before you do it.  Because, this summer really sucked!

And by the middle of September my legs are still not healed plus I somehow hurt my shoulder and my knee, don’t ask because I don’t know how I did it but my entire left side is a complete train wreck!


Just a little update for 2011.  My leg is healed over but I have terrible scars.  The doctor advised “Well, they are kind of ugly so just buy some cute socks to cover them up.”  Oh yes! And I paid for this advise.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

DANGER TO YOUR HEALTH! RETIREMENT COMMUNITY

When I first moved here two things happened.  First I met a couple of gals that I thought were going to be good friends but found that I had spoke to soon.  I had been here about a month when I called my daughter and told her that I have these old gals figured out.  “They are like PMSing 14 year olds with 50 years of bitch under their belt to back it up.”  No offense gals, because I am pretty darn sure that some of you, or many of you or most of you would put me in that category too.  And I for one am proud to be there because lets face it, we have worked all of our lives both in the home and outside of it, raised our families, took care of the hubby, cooked God knows how many meals, day after day after day.  With that we were always TCB (taking care of business) concerning our families, relatives, school, jobs, pets, holidays, etc. and to accomplish that you have to become a strong woman. 

Unfortunately, strong women are also opinionated, set in their ways and let’s face it, we all want to get our way about most things.  (Translate to:  All the time).  Then we have the cultural and geological backgrounds that separate us from our neighbors.  It’s really a wonder that we get along with others as well as we do.  I think that friendship and getting along is the luck of finding just the right woman or better yet a group of women who are truly caring and share values much as your own.  Personally I will add laughter to that list as well.

The second thing was when I began to look around at all the truly beautiful women and I thought to myself, “It must be the water”.  After all, what else could it possibly be?  But this is called a retirement community and after we had lost some of our friends and neighbors due to ill health or just plain age I decided, “Maybe, I don’t want to drink the water after all”.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Friday, July 8, 2011

ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA - LADIES OF THE LAKE RED HATTERS

About the time of my girly phase I decided that I wanted to go out and play.  Remember the commercial for spaghetti sauce where a bunch of Italian women friends were running through a meadow and rolling down a hillside?  Think Mama Mia but with a little more flesh.  Well every time I saw that commercial I wanted to go out and play with those gals.  I wanted to jump and run and roll!  Yeah, not a chance with my bad back but I still wanted to do it.  (Can you tell that I absolutely loved Mama Mia!)

I had met a lady before I moved into the park and to see us together you would have laughed.  Here I am at six feet and Carol (a Carol of a different color) has osteoporosis so badly that she had shrunk to probably less than five feet.  Carol was a funny, funny lady and was always in a cheerful mood.  During one of our conversations I told her that I wanted to start a Red Hat club here in the park and she got so excited about the idea that I really started the Ladies of the Lake for two reasons:  so I could go out and play and act not-my-age and because Carol wanted it so badly.  Carol was at the first meeting and stayed in Red Hats until she passed away last year.

But back to the Red Hats:  What I hadn’t taken into account is that any time you get a bunch of women together then you have a vast difference of opinion about how things should be done.  Yes we had a lot of fun but there was also a lot of arguing and we lost several members because of that.  All in all, I think this has been a good experience for most of the gals and I am pleased for them.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

HEY GIRLFRIEND, CAN YOU BE SIX FOOT TALL AND STILL BE GIRLY?

I realized when I was sitting here one day that I didn’t do anything girly for myself.  I think I must have stopped that back sometime in the 80’s when all the girly stuff was for my teenage daughter.  I think I lost myself somewhere in the shuffle.

So one day I sat down and painted my toenails.  Oh Boy, I’m girly now!  Well, maybe not quite so I rushed out bought a toe ring with a little bling on it.  I don’t care what anyone else thinks but I absolutely love looking down at my feet and seeing all that shiny pink or rose polish.  I tried red polish but just a word of advise here, if you use red polish put on an undercoat first or else when you take the polish off, your nails are stained a really ugly reddish brown color. Not pretty!

I bought a couple of girly things for the house or more specifically just for me and then I looked at my daughter Cat one day and she looked terrific so with her advise I went to Sephora.  Wow, this Bare Minerals and Urban Decay makeup is terrific and I feel so, I don’t know, GIRLY!

I laughed at my friend Carole one day after she had started getting the rings (more about that later), because she had a makeover and started using makeup and painting her nails.  I guess it’s something we all have to go through.  I told her that she looked wonderful and Carole answered “I just decided that if I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it”.  Amen girlfriend, scoot over and let me on that makeup wagon too.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

FRIENDS - LADIES BUNCO OR LADIES OF THE EVENING

By the time the next New Year’s Eve rolled around and I decided that I was NOT going to sit here by myself.  I thought about it and then it dawned on me that I was in the midst of a whole bunch of single gals. I called my daughter and told her I was going to have a party for the single ladies in the park.  Cat listened and then she said “and what are you going to do at this party?”  Well, darned if I knew, my bright ideas only stretch so far.  Cat suggested that we play Bunco and I thought about it and decided “Yeah, we’ll play Bunco” and then I even made it a potluck because all us old gals really could use a special New Year’s Eve celebration. 

I got on the phone with my handy, dandy park register and started calling everyone who didn’t have a husband or ‘significant other’ and before I got half way through the list I had 16 gals lined up.  I reserved the clubhouse for the 31st. and every one showed up and had so much fun that they wanted to do it every month.  So we have been playing Bunco once a month for 7 years now – and that’s how the Ladies Bunco was born.  (My choice for name was Ladies of the Evening but that got voted down.)  Some month’s we only have 10 or so but as word has grown, there are times that we have 40 or more gals.  Yes, we are loud and noisy and every time we switch seats several of the gals get lost but oh well, we have fun and that’s what it is all about.  At one time some of the gals decided that we were too noisy and yelled too loud when we got a Bunco, I guess they got a headache from all the noise, so we played a couple of times and when someone Buncoed they were very quiet about it and almost whispered Bunco.  Now me, being the one who yelled the loudest, finally told them that we are there to have fun and part of that fun is to be silly and make noise so we are back to shouting and laughing and some of us (me?) even do a little happy dance every chance we get.



My knee and my shoulder have been bothering me, what can I say I’m not quite as young as I once was.  So I went to Bunco just to take the gal’s picture and came home laughing because every time I said, “Okay, act like you’re having fun!”  As one, they all started talking and of course I picked a night when we had a very small group but I heard this morning that they had a really good time.


Wishing you Joy and Laughter Everyday!

Friday, July 1, 2011

ALONE AND TRYING TO LOVE IT! OR LEARNING TO LAUGH AGAIN!

I am a mother and a grandmother and once upon a time I was a wife but now I am living alone for the first time in my adult life and there are many changes that I have gone through to get to the “happy” stage but I’ll save that story for another time.

Well, no I won’t because it is the beginning of the “new” me.  So I moved into a retirement community (a large senior mobile home park). I moved from a huge house into 1440 sq. feet and was trying to find a home for everything that I brought with me and getting more and more depressed.  One day I bought a new address book and sat down that night to transfer my friends into it and omit “his” and “our” friends. Gals, sometime when you want to be depressed try this little exercise and you will be surprised at the “friends” that were “ours” and no longer or maybe never were yours.  I even lost some relatives in the deal!  You want a number; okay from two address books full of names I was only able to transfer a handful into my new book and two of those friends live out of state.  These were friends that I knew were mine and mine alone.  Sad, isn’t it?  Yes, it’s sad and it scared me half to death.

I moved into my home in November and spent my birthday with my daughter Cat and I went to her house for Christmas.  I knew I needed to meet people and do it in a hurry to save my sanity. While I was still unpacking, I became secretary on the park’s social club as a way to meet people and I also started going to the park’s craft class. (More about the Crafty Ladies later.)  Then on New Year’s Eve the social club held a dance and, no I did not go.  I sat here by myself watching Tvland and I thought, “Is this the way it’s going to be the rest of my life”.  That’s when I made the first new years resolution that I had made in years and it turned out to be the smartest thing that I could have done.  My resolution was this:  Everyday, I would walk out of my house and talk to someone even if I had to go knocking on doors to do it (and I sometimes did).  My daughter knew about my resolution so she wasn’t surprised when I called her one-day and told her “I just walked out to the mailbox and talked to five people so I’m good for the week!”  No, she didn’t let me get away with that and I had to remind her of whose resolution it is, anyway!  But what it amounts to is that I met a lot of people, some acquaintances, some eventually became great friends and a special few became my back-door friends.

The point is that I was really in sad shape when I moved in here.  I had lost my gorgeous big home, my not so wonderful husband, I had very few friends and here I was at my age alone, a place that I never thought about being.  I guess what I am trying to say is that I had to learn how to laugh again and find the humor in my life, in all the day to day happenings and conversations. ***