It’s a special Caturday! It’s Mimi and Walter’s 13th birthday. They’re getting older, and I know I may not have many more years with them. Hopefully they surprise us all and live a good while longer! But for now, I have their sweet dispositions and generous love to keep me company.
They share a birthday with our feline blogging buddy, Parker, who is 12 today. His mom has a great site called “on pets and prisoners” that’s all about her photography and the stories she tells about the pictures she’s taken. Check it out!
Well, I was trying to get a picture to show how pretty my Mimi is. She looked simply lovely. I think she’s still awfully pretty in this shot, and I rarely catch her off guard. By the way, I looked up “off guard” to see if it’s hyphenated or not and got a bit confused. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. So I guess you could say we’re both off guard.
I hope you and yours are able to celebrate today. I find the state our government is in troubling, but I have hope for the future. Our country is 249 years old and has survived a lot of turmoil in that time. I wish for peace for all, here and in countries around the world.
Anyone remember the Bicentennial and all the hoopla surrounding that celebration? I hope that next year, when our country turns 250, we have plenty for which to be thankful.
Right now, I’m just glad I have a three-day weekend.
Today I visited with an old friend. I hadn’t seen him in ten years, and he looked just the same, particularly his welcoming smile. No, this wasn’t a romantic reunion (his husband would object to that), but it was an important one. This was someone who supported me in my darkest hours, when I most needed friends and had very few I could count on.
I won’t go into details of those dark hours, except to say they sure separated the wheat from the chaff when it came to the people in my life. Today, I wonder what a similar situation would do to my current group of friends. I don’t like to think about it, but I’m acutely aware of the consequences of our worst moments.
We all have life-changing moments that open our eyes to a reality we hadn’t fully comprehended before. Okay, if you haven’t, you’re young and it will happen. These moments aren’t always bad, in fact, they can be very good. It’s important to recognize them and hold on to their meaning in our lives.
But more importantly, it’s important to hang on to the friends we make during these times. Life may separate us physically, but love will keep the friendship alive.
When I was young, a favorite meal of mine was something you’d likely never find in a cookbook. We called these sandwiches bologna and cheeses, and they were a kind of disgusting mixture of (you guessed it) ground bologna and ground cheese, with ketchup, onions, and probably some other stuff mixed in. My mom would grind the bologna and cheese in a meat grinder, nothing electric like you’d find today, all done by hand.
To make the sandwiches, you first broiled one side of the bread, just enough to toast it, then spread the gloppy mix on the other side and broiled that until it was blackened just a little. They were yummy. Today’s prompt asks me which food when I eat it instantly transports me to childhood, and I haven’t eaten any of these in years. But the thought of them brings back happy memories.
Remember these?
One of the happiest was from a fourth-grade project. Our student teacher was getting married, and we were all given a 4×6 recipe card and told to write instructions for our favorite meal on it. We were asked to remember that Miss Stone, the student teacher, was a novice cook and to bring simple, easy-to-make recipes.
Somehow, that last bit of instruction got lost in the homes of most of the students, and they brought in complex recipes that would intimidate the most experienced chefs. However, I dutifully wrote out instructions for Bologna and Cheeses and presented that recipe to Miss Stone, now Mrs. Lisle.
It was her husband’s favorite. In fact, she made it for his friends when they were over watching football, and ended up sending the recipe home with all of them, as well.
It’s nice when a gift is appreciated, and especially nice when you’re nine years old and your teacher compli ments you in front of the whole class.
I doubt I’ll ever eat Bologna and Cheeses again, but the memory is a strong one.
My World With Words 
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