Christmas shopping

In my youth we would hit the road by 8 a.m. and go until 3 or 4 p.m. to make sure we had hit all the garage sales in the area.  We'd go on Friday (when I was teaching and it was summer) and hit the ones we missed on Saturday.

For a time nearly everything in our house had been purchased at some garage sale or other.  The house filled up with stuff, a lot of things that needed dusting or were kitchen utensils that we used once-in-a-blue-moon.  Family and friends were pretty much in the same predicament.  Looking at other folks left-overs had lost its allure.

We stopped garage saling about eight years ago but every once in a while I'd get the urge and we hit a sale or two before I decided I didn't need anything else, especially something "used." 

This year I suggested to Hubby early one spring Saturday morning that we try a couple of sales for maybe half an hour.  We didn't last that long but we found a fun Christmas item to take to Houston for gifting.  We began to go out to the sales, probably twice a month, usually for less than an hour.  We bought some good used books and made a nice little heap of Christmas presents just for giggles in Houston -- nothing anyone would have to dust but could be put to interesting use. 

On my way to lunch with the Wyandotte retired ladies last Wednesday, I saw a sign for a neighborhood garage sale across the state line -- an area that had been pretty productive in the past.  We headed out about 9 a.m. this morning and managed just over 90 minutes before I was totally pooped from my efforts but we had a trunk full of some really great presents, mostly for the Houston crew.  All for under $10!  I'm probably going to have to spend more on the wrapping that I have on the actual gifts!

PS to my Houston family:  I promise not to bring down anything you will have to take care of or store!  Well, mostly not store, anyway.  So far everything I've acquired seems to be things you are currently using every day (or for entertaining). 

Love those naps

We dressed in our swimming suits and threw on shorts / shift over them and drove over the five blocks to the YMCA for our swimming class.  The parking lot at 9 a.m., always packed with cars, was nearly empty.  "Last minute vacations before school starts," we muttered to each other.

But as we got out of the pink Lincoln we were hailed by others who had already learned our pool was closed.  I had noted to Hubby on Monday that the water was getting a bit murky, especially in the "kids" area.  Then Wednesday we missed aerobics because I met with the Wyandotte Ladies Who Lunch (WLWL) for an early meal in Kansas City, KS.

Instead of swimming this morning we got me a Super Sonic Breakfast burrito from Sonic and I came home thinking I'd catch up on some of DVR TV shows.  One burrito and 20 minutes later I was sound asleep.

Now the salad has been made for lunch and the Sims 3 is booting on the tower and I'm feeling refreshed from "power" nap.  Hopefully next Monday the pool will be re-opened and fresh from cleaning -- but we have doctor's appointments to keep (we see the same GP so schedule together) and won't be among the active.  It's been quite some time since we had a break like this (over a week) from exercise.  We both miss it. 

It's the company, not the food

This week my "old" school district is having teaching in-service in preparation for the start of school next week.  Two years ago when I retired, I met for lunch with a friend I had taught with and who had been retired for a year.  We kept expanding our list of attendees for our monthly get-togethers as more and more of our co-workers retired themselves.

Today we met at a very small, new BBQ joint in downtown Kansas City Kansas, sampled the brisket, ribs, and burnt ends, and shared how pleased we were to be able to go home from lunch and take a long nap.  Well, two of our group, actually sub for the district -- and being the fabulous teachers that they were (and are), they are often filling long-term sub positions.

I left home at 10:15, cruised my normal "to work" route from two years ago, and thanked my lucky stars that I had been given the gift of full-time retirement.  You can never tell if one day the economy may swing wrong and I find myself needing supplemental income, but right now I'm reveling in my freedom. 

The luncheon food was okay but visiting with the interesting ladies I had suffered the slings and arrows of educational devotion with was much better than the gustatory sensations.  I was feeding my soul and not my stomach. 

Here are some pictures from some of our previous lunches:

Better than sex?

It was three weeks since my last massage which had worked such wonders (along with the acupuncture) on my knees that I had been skipping along pain free.  Until a week ago Saturday night when I caused the foot / toe damage by walking into the kitchen step stool.

When the staff at the therapy center asked, "How are you today," I answered with a long, sad face and a litany of my complaints -- I did manage to preface that I had felt better for a brief time than I had in 10 years.  But that had all but washed completely away.  "I feel like the last rose of summer," I summarized as I removed my tee and bra for the message.

The table was clothed in cool linens and this time the music was soft piano.  My masseuse is middle aged but her hands are soft, warm, and timeless.  She started with the misery that has been my right foot for the past week.  I was leery -- the foot hurts all the time and manipulating it wasn't going to make me happy.  At first it was slow and easy but then I began to twitch and jerk.  "I'm working on the tension, the sore spots, and some of this will also help the knees so I need you to breathe through it if you can."  So I did.

I had been having a headache for the last 24 hours and living on pain meds, even resorting to the stronger gout pain pills when nothing helped either the head or the foot.  Within five minutes the ache in my head eased.

She moved up to my back and then spent a lot of time kneading the knots out of my neck and shoulders.  When I turned over, she began with the left side of my body.  The ache in my right foot eased into a very manageable jolt now and again. 

Thirty minutes later and I felt, for the first time in days, relaxed and nearly pain free.

Before I left I made my appointment for two weeks hence -- to heck with this going once a month.  Like the Spike Lee movie proclaims, "She's Gotta Have It!"

Time for Friendship

In high school I had two friends I palled around with all the time but once graduation came we totally lost touch.  Each went a very different direction in their lives and we didn't maintain contact.  In college I had one bosom friend and that friendship lasted until I discovered she was a closet bigot with a mean streak and then she became my mother's bosom friend, and honestly, one of my worst enemies.  

My friendships with women don't seem to last.  I've had several in my adult years but they always petered out after a time.  I missed having women friends. 

Hubby and I have "couple" friends and I love them dearly, but they are not "girl" friends.  We don't shop together or have sleepovers or meet to share broken hearts.  We go to concerts and dinner and we help each other out in sickness and worse, but it isn't "girly" stuff.  

When I got a contract with the #3 telephone company in the 1990's to provide consulting services, I worked with three women, two of whom became "friends."  We lunched together and shared life stories.  We attended family funerals to give support.  Even when my contract ended, they remained e-mail and Facebook buddies. One of these ladies was my boss and a big-time executive at the #3 which honestly, kind of limited some of the interactions we could reasonably share.  She's one of the smartest, creative, and decent people I know and I'm thrilled that our friendship has outlasted our working time together.  She no longer lives in town but we meet, periodically, whenever she's visiting family here in Kansas City.  We share books and pictures of her travels and stories of the wonderful places she's lived and visited since her time in KC. 

The youngest of the women I came to admire at #3 was the friend that you know is your friend, even when you have long, long periods without contact.  The minute we resume our relationship, though, it's like we were never apart.  I honestly thought I'd never have a friendship like this one so late in my life, but I bless our time together, whenever our paths recross.

After I retired we promised each other we would meet monthly for dinner, catch up with our lives and family obligations, and just chill together.  We've done okay as long as her kids weren't getting married or moving across the world or my husband wasn't in the hospital.  Which means that actually we meet once every three or four months. 

Bristol Seafood Grill in Leawood

Lately she's been having a tough time with family obligations and some angst on the job so I've been trying to be more persistent in our finding time to be together.  Sunday we met half-way between our residences (she's suburb while I'm inner city) for brunch. 

It's rather an anomaly that we have a pretty decent seafood restaurant in land-locked KC but this place has a wonderful Sunday brunch with salmon, tuna, boiled shrimp, grits, crab souffle, lobster mac and cheese, prime rib, ham, sausage and eggs, waffles, an omelet bar, and a huge array of desserts (as well as breads and salads). 

We arrived at 11:30, filled our plates, and ate and talked -- for three hours.  It was a muggy, rainy day -- perfect for girl talk and delicious food.  We told each other things we don't talk about with others, we shared family stories, we relaxed and reveled in warm, intimate girl talk.   Yes, we made plans for later in the month but nothing that would stress either of us or feel like a commitment, especially in her over-committed life.  We even have plans for a "girl's get-away" which I'm especially looking to with great anticipation. 

The seafood buffet only

Lobster mac and cheese

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ours is the one of the more perfect friendships -- we meet when we can without recriminations about lost time.  We understand the obligations we each have to meet and when they don't overwhelm us, we find time for each other.  With my track record of choosing the wrong women for friendships or ones where we honestly have little in common, I finally found a winner. 

The Gamer

As a kid my favorite toys were my paper dolls.  I had a huge carton where I kept all the clothing for the dolls but I only played with two of the actual dolls themselves.  One was designated for whichever friend had enough imagination to play paper dolls with me; my doll was always Susan Hayward.  It didn't matter that the clothes may have come from other dolls -- we would cut and alter to make them fit the dolls we were playing with.  We had hundreds of outfits to choose from and we could imagine lifestyles for our "girls" that were, to us, wildly exotic and full of adventure. 

Sometime around age 12 I gave up toys but I held on to my box of paper dolls even into adulthood.  Along with nearly all my childhood dreams, they were left behind when I finally moved out of my mother's house in 1973.  She gave everything of mine away to Goodwill as punishment so now I only had my memories of the fun I had with those paper dolls.  At least twice a year I check out paper dolls on the web but quickly realize that those days have long passed me by. 

Sometime around 2000, I found The Sims computer game and bought my first edition.  The fun was that no goals were set in playing the game, you simply created a "virtual" human (a Sim), built him or her a house, and made a life for the creature.  I loved building the houses and decorating them.  I loved creating huge wardrobes for my Sim.  I wasn't much into the actual living arrangements of my creation but there were plenty of cheats I could access to make sure that my Sim had enough money to buy the materials to create the perfect home and live the perfect life.  There was also a great community of creative folks out there making lots of additions to the game and the company that built the game (Maxis) kept adding new versions (Pets, University Life, Vacation Life, etc.) to ensure I spent plenty of money to keep my Sim current.

The only problem was that if you downloaded enough of the user creations eventually you would find one that would blow the game off your computer.  The number of times I had to reinstall The Sims games and then sort through which download had caused problems finally made the game nearly impossible.  Plus Electronic Arts gained control of the game and issued a new version of it -- Sims 2  which I didn't find those nearly as much fun to play.  Each addition to the game began requiring more and more computer memory and high-end graphics and I finally gave up my Sim life. 

Still, I always remembered just how much fun the original game had been, and just like my paper dolls of eras past, I wanted one more go at creating a perfect Sim.  Just as I retired I discovered that the original Sims game was free for download so I accessed it.  Most of the great user created objects / characters had now vanished so the game wasn't nearly as much fun for me. 

I began looking at Sims 3, a game I had never tried.  The game could be downloaded now -- initially you had to buy it by disk -- so I tried it out for the cheap price of around $20 for the original plus two other additions / worlds.  It can also be played interactively with others, but I'm much too much of a loner to want others messing around in my created worlds. 

My addiction began all over again and this time around EA (Electronic Arts) had noted the user created problems and retained control of the process through an Exchange that only put out items that were safe to install in your game. They now offer Sim dollars (which you have to purchase in $20 increments) that allow you to add more objects and worlds to your game, besides all the free downloads.

I currently have all the worlds and many of the upgraded venues.  My Sims creations are numerous, though I'm not exactly creative.  If I know you, you are probably in my Sim game, living in a palace filled with exotic furnishings and taking vacations to China, France, or India.  You might or might not have children, but you certainly have a pet -- a dog, a cat, a horse, or something only a Sim could create (like maybe a unicorn).  Nearly all my Sims have been to college and most have a degree.  You don't have extensive wardrobes like in the past but you live in the most grand creations that take hours of my time to build and decorate.  Most of you live by the sea, though mountains are plentiful, too.  You can travel to the future, snorkel in the ocean, live on a houseboat, and "woohoo" with the most popular Sim in the game. 

Instead of blogging I'm busy creating my own fantasy world, filled with only rich, educated, smart people living the grand life.  Incidentally,  EA is releasing Sims 4 in the fall.  I've actually had to have the conversation with Hubby about getting a more "graphic" computer, so I can continue my life of game playing.  Clearly this addition is not abating. 

Here is what Wikipedia says about The Sims:

The success of The Sims resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the series five world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include "World's Biggest-Selling Simulation Series" and "Best Selling PC Game of All Time" for the original The Sims game, which sold 16 million units, 100 times EA's original projection of 160,000 units.

The Vanishing Poster

Just when I think I've finally decided to end this blog once and for all (because if you are only posting once a month -- or less -- you really aren't blogging!), I think about the 600+ previous posts that document the last eights years of my life and I just can't delete Milly's Muse.  All those posts about Hubby,the boys, employment, teaching, holidays with family and all of life's intervening events -- and I just can't let go.

So I made a new resolution.  These posts don't have to be long and I really can take pictures of my life -- I have two notebooks, a lap top, and a wonderful Canon camera, as well as the tower.  Like all the new phone applications I'm not all that quick at taking a decent shot, finding out where it's filed, editing it, and finally posting it -- but I CAN do this.  I can make posts out of pictures of my life and maybe that will teach me more about using the new media (which I seem to be resisting like crazy). 

Here's what has occupied me this week:

 

Funny how in this photo it doesn't look as bad as it has felt.  Saturday night I walked into the metal step stool that I have to use in the kitchen to retrieve objects from the kitchen cabinets that the crazy ladies who built this house put in at eight feet height.  The bruising goes right down the top of my foot (it's still green and very swollen) and covers the back side, too.  Walking has been quite problematic.  I missed water aerobics on Monday, went on Wednesday but had to hop around on one foot instead of really exercising.  I probably won't go on Friday.  The pain was been pretty incredible -- and that seems to make me very tired, so I take naps and then pain pills at night so I've slept a lot.

Oh, yes - Monday was our 36th wedding anniversary (41 years together).  Dear friends treated us on Sunday to a wonderful dinner of heaps of meat from here:

Jess and Jim's Steakhouse in Martin City

 

 And this is what we devoured:

Hubby had pork chops, I had steak and lobster tail, Nancy had prime rib, Debby and Lou each had steak!

Most of my informal posts are now on Facebook which I really enjoy.  Lots of my Paseo High School kids have become "friends" and it's fun to see how well they are doing.  I like the immediate feedback of the Facebook postings (however, I have no use for Twitter, yet) and feeling connected.  Here on the blog I just see that 40 people accessed this blog but only two left comments and I feel isolated.

Weather here in KC -- quite cool for the end of July.  School starts next week.  Gee, I'm pleased to be retired!  Here's to blogging tomorrow and meeting my newest resolution.