Being Seventy-Eight...

Seventy-eight years!  Wow!  (Just pretend there are 78 candles on that cake!)

What is "78?"  It's a prety big number.  It's the number of years I have been privileged to live on this earth.  It is the number of candles on my Birthday cake.

I am so grateful for those 78 years!  I have been blessed with my greatest blessing... most of my memories intact.  All it takes is a word, a picture, a smell, a book, a smile, a face, a place, or anything familiar to call up to my memory the vivid pictures of the past.  I am grateful for that.

I recently received a telephone call from a friend I have known since I was 3-years-old!  We shared many memories during that call and a lot of laughter.  It was a wonderful day.  Another friend remarked on Facebook that we shared memories from our childhood of 70 years ago!  We remembered our years of dancing at Mahri's School of Dance in Santa Monica, CA and I smiled with those memories.

I live by the ocean on the coast of Oregon and the smell of the salt air mixed with fish takes me back to my childhood in Santa Monica (which is also by the ocean in California.)  I had so many happy memories back then.  Days spent on the beach tanning, swimming in the Pacific, walking the boardwalk or the Pier.  My favorite was riding on the Carousel on the Santa Monica Pier!

I recently attended a reunion of several friends from my Church in Santa Monica.  Some of them I did not recognize, but others came quickly to the forefront of my memory.  The faces have aged, but the eyes remain the same!  Reunions are amazing.

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And so, as I celebrate another year, create another memory, eat a few more bites of a wonderful Birthday cake and live to love another day, I share my gratitude with all whom I have contact with on this day.  Thank you for being a part of my life and helping me to build more memories.

Here's to another 22 years, when I reach 100 and, hopefully, my mind will still be as sharp as it is today!  We shall see!

An Unusual Sandscape...

My husband and I like to walk the beach on occasion and for the most part the sand is smooth, even and pretty easy to walk on.  Not so on one of our sunny days last week.  We drove to Agate Beach (a nice beach about 2 miles from our home) to enjoy a leisurely walk.  We had no idea what we were in for until we got there.

It was as though we just stepped off a spaceship onto the surface of the moon!  I had never seen so many dunes...hills and valleys...and really interesting patterns in the sand before.  There were little mounds perfectly sculpted by water and wind and blowing sand that from a distance looked like some of the sandstone formations I have seen in some of Southern Utah's canyons.  But these were not hardened over centuries of wear and tear from the elements; these were still just little mounds of soft sand that fell apart if you touched them.

Walking in the sand was a real work-out, too.  We tried to stay on top of the dunes, but occasionally we encountered a dead-end, requiring us to slide down the dune into the canyon (relatively damp and easier to walk on) and then up the other side of another one.  From the parking lot to the water's edge must have been about 2 blocks!  (Or, at least, it seemed like it!)  We were exhausted by the time we got to the water...and then we had to go back

 We shall never forget our outing to the beach on this particular day.  We are going to try and go back in a couple of weeks (when it stops raining) and see what has changed.  And change it will, because that is the nature or the beaches on the Oregon Coast...ever changing.





Exhausted!










Hills and Valleys!

Alien Markings?




Moonscape? or Sandscape?  It was awesome!

Sometimes A Phone Call Can Make You Smile...

It was just another ordinary September day on the Oregon Coast.  It was a cloudy, off and on rainy day...you know, the usual ones we get in September on the cioast.  I was busying myself with some crucial tasks, trying to organize our tiny space, when my cell phone rang.  I don't assign original rings to specific people, so I could not tell who it was just by the ring.  But the Caller ID gave it away!  It was my dearest childhood friend from Santa Monica, Joan Trent, and I am always delighted to hear from her.

We chatted about a number of things, including childhood memories, when she got down to the purpose of her call.  She had been going through some old Christmas letters that she kept in a notebook and ran across one from me.  It had been written in the year 1990.  It had madre her laugh and she wanted to share it with me.  Oh, she is so much like me--keeping verylittle thing that has some sentimental meaning to her.  She read it to me and we had a good laugh together.  Such a dear friend, that one!

I don't know how long we talked, but knowing phone calls from the past, it had to have been nearly an hour.  Seventy-five years as friends, and we still keep in touch.  I love that girl and am so grateful that she hasn't disappeared like so many others have.  Thank you, Joan, for turning an otherwise ordinary day on the Oregon Coast into a day filled with sunshine and smiles.

I Never Forgot,,,

September 11, 2001...the day the world stopped turning!  It was a pivotal point for the U.S.A. and the rest of the world.  It was a day that many...most... Americans lost their innocence.  It was the day we opened our eyes and began to see what was happening in the world and what was happening here at home.  It was the day the World Trade Towers came tumbling down, victims of a viscous attack by foreigners.  It was a day my life changed forever.

Today marks the 16th Anniversary of that horrendous day.  Sixteen years...and I'm still alive to see the aftermath!  Since that day we are at war with a whole nation of Islamists. Since that day, we have lost trust in our closest allies and Europe is falling apart.  Since that day, we are hated by those who used to love and trust us.  Since that day, even here in our own Country, we are pitted brother against brother, color against color, Political choices against Political Choices, Religion against Religion.  Our hearts have been hardened.  Our dreams have been dashed, our lives have been changed.

Even Nature is pumping up her calamities against a land that has turned sour.  This September, we have witnessed horrific million plus acre wildfires in the Northwest; we have felt and witnessed "earthquakes in diverse places;" we are witnessing the power of Category 5 Hurricanes as they blast the Southeast--even Houston, Texas and surrounding areas, and the entire state of Florida blowing apart and many areas are under water.

As I age, my senses are quickly fleeting and I don't know how many more 9/11 days I will be able to write about, but as I stated in my first Blog, all those years ago--I WILL NEVER FORGET!  Will yo?