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!