Upcoming trip

Oh boy! I have been near tears a few times this week after a few phone conversations. These are not tears of sadness but tears of laughter. The best kind of tears!!!

So Ms. Patti will be going on a trip with one of her "other" friends in a few short days. She says she was originally going to take the bus down but found out her friend was driving and decided that it made sense to carpool. This is where the story gets a little crazy. Patti flies by the seat of her pants and literally is up for anything. She has lived life in the big city and in a small town. Nothing surprises her and that is the beauty of her existence.

So this trip. She tells me that since they started making plans, it has become quite complicated in nature. She says her friend only knows one way to get to her destination. Her friend is worried what will happen if they sway off the one path she knows. Patti assures her that she will have her husband drop her off at her house and she will have her son in law pick her up wherever she ends up. This doesn't ease the driver's concerns. Patti tells me that something simple like asking to ride along has turned into a mountain of worry for another.

I told Patti that she should help with the navigation part and maybe they will end up in San Francisco instead of Eugene. We thought of many things she could do to make this trip an eventful one for the driver. Talk the driver into frequent stops and then say "I don't have a clue where we are".

But my favorite part of the stories we concocted was having the two of them on the freeway with the driver going at least 60mph and having Patti turn to her and say "Thanks for the ride" as she opens the door and rolls across like three lanes of traffic. She adds to it by saying her friend would look at her rolling across the lanes in horror and then see her get up unscathed and stick her thumb out to hitchhike..........

I want to carpool with these two.......

Retirement

We recently had a friend of ours retire after 30 years of service to her employer. It is hard to imagine the pure dedication and commitment that she gave over the years. I hate to admit that gypsy blood runs through my veins. I can also assure everyone that no employer will get 30 years of my life. If by some sweet miracle I stayed somewhere for that long, there would be no giggles, no high kicks, no cartwheels, and NO jokes. I would be one of the nurses I dread turning into after staying in this field for so long. My face would have sour puss written all over it. Surprisingly though, I have ran across quite a few nurses that have put in this amount of time and still come to work with smiles on their faces. Bless all their hearts!

So I want to focus on the friend who recently retired. She had a celebration and David and I attended. Guess who was also there? My friend Patti....YEAH. The place was pretty packed with everyone that the guest of honor knew and a few that she didn't. When I saw Patti, I knew the rest of this celebration was going to be quite entertaining. We whispered and we laughed.

Someone was nice enough to bring in this HUGE cake. We watched the people come and go. We watched a select few grab a piece of cake and then they were out of there. There was no congratulating this worker who gave 30 years. No, they simply came for the FREE piece of cake. We thought it would be quite humorous if an altercation could occur after these people grabbed their piece of cake and ran. I would have loved to stop them in the hallway and say something like "Hmm, I noticed you took a piece of cake and left.......I also noticed that you didn't even congratulate the guest of honor.....what gives?". Can you imagine the reaction that I would get? I might even ask for the piece of cake back....

Anyway congrats to one of the good ones. She gave many years and they were lucky to have her in their company for so long. She will be greatly missed!

Motorcycle Trip

So Ron has been spending his Labor Day weekend on a motorcycle trip with his son to visit family. Patti has been left alone by herself and we got to talking. It doesn't take long before the imagination runs wild when I talk to her.

She was describing how much fun Ron was having on his bike trip. She talked about how much he was enjoying the family get together that he was attending. She told me that he is insisting that she come next year and he wants to plan now for this trip. I asked Patti if she would consider riding on the motorcycle with Ron. She said that she would have to because of gas prices.

She also mentioned that poor Ron would have to make frequent restroom stops related to her bladder urgency issues. This is what sparked the imagination. She said that "about every six miles he would have to stop". We laughed and we laughed. We imagined him looking in his mirror at her when she poked him to indicate that a stop is needed. We imagined how great it would be if at the rest stop she would just be downing the liquids......oh poor Ron.

"I think I will have another cup of coffee before we hit the highway!".

It may be the last trip that he insists she take.

Hannah and P.G.

Today we had a fairly busy day. We went to visit Patti at her house. Hannah tore her way through their home like a tornado. She managed to find the cookies and the chips. She totally bypassed me and went straight to Patti when she found her gold. She asked Patti in her sweet toddler voice for "CHIPS" and "COOKIES". Patti couldn't resist her youthful ways and gave in.

My favorite part of the day is when Hannah took one whole side of an oreo cookie and attempted to put the whole thing in her mouth. I heard a couple coughs and watched pieces of oreo cookie slide down her face. She looked at me with her beautiful brown eyes as if to say "I didn't know this would happen". I didn't tell her that this has happened before and that is why the eagle eye follows her every move.

Anyway we had a lot of fun. Hannah loves her Patti. I told Patti about our brief hospital visit last week. We were in and out in record time after visiting her dad. When we got to the exit Hannah started yelling for her Patti. The yelling was accompanied by tears and my personal favorite THE BACK ARCH. This story boosted Patti's spirits and for once in her life she truly felt worthy of a child's love. HAHA I couldn't resist the last part.

Second Fiddle

Patti's daughter Donna is in town today.  Donna answered the phone without looking at caller id. It was me. 

She asked if this was "John" or someone else's name I cannot recall. I played along....... She then asked me how I was doing?

My response was, "You know Donna, I just don't really like the way you have been acting lately". Silence on the other end...

"Who is this?"she said

I laughed and she knew that it was me. She yelled to her mom..."It's your best friend Jennifer". 

On the phone today Patti told me that she will be attending her grandson's graduation. This is the reason for Donna's visit. She couldn't talk long on the phone today. I told her that I understood  that she would be busy today and to call me later. She said that she would call later tonight or tomorrow. When she spoke the word TOMORROW, I nearly lost it. I told her I would not play second fiddle to her family........

Patti at her home 

Ron and Patti (AKA: Abner and P.G.)

Pictures

So it has been awhile since I have blogged about P.G. We still talk often and the topics of conversation always seem to involve a "what if" story.

Here is tonight's "what if" story......

Patti's daughter Donna is coming to visit her this weekend. On one of the last visits she made, she mentioned to Patti that there were limited pictures of Donna and her family. Well this makes me laugh, because I know my little peanuts face is plastered all over that place. Her beautiful face is everywhere you look. 8X10's, 5X7's, and so on.

So Donna had her husband walk through the house and he barely muttered a word while inspecting the pictures. He stated that Donna was right, there are no pictures of them or hardly any......

So here is what we thought would be a great idea. I would bring over all the pictures of my family and place them in all the frames that fill Patti's home. Wherever there is a frame, it will be filled with my family and our cheesy smiling faces. Donna will come in and inspect the premises, only to find that there are no pictures of her or so she thought. Upon questioning her mother about the lack of family photos, her mother would tell her to follow her into the bathroom. After closing the bathroom door, Patti would point to the lone picture of Donna. A small picture of her placed near the bottom of the wall, just above the heater. You could only gaze upon this picture with the bathroom door shut.........