When I was young...

    I can't tell you how excited I got when my son brought about 8 tons of driveway rock to my house last weekend. They raked and shoveled and worked their butts off for about 5 hours to get it all spread. ( I have a big driveway). 

  I got an extra parking space/ turnaround too.  AND a little path up to my sidewalk.  I was over the moon.

  I haven't always been like this. Getting all excited about things like gravel.  There was a time when only really outrageous things excited me.  Like the time I got to drive a boyfriends Porsche 135 mph in the desert in the middle of the night.  Or the time I flew to South America, and stayed there for 4 months, unbeknownst to any of my family.  (They knew I was gone.  I think.  They just didn't know where).  Or the time I picked up a guy in a bar because he told me he owned a sky-diving business and I wanted to do that. Always had wanted to. It was AMAZING, falling through the sky. Ahhh... when I was young. And fearless. And foolish.  Bulletproof.  Immortal.

  Now I get excited about gravel. And jams and jellies that actually set up LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO !!  Or getting 45 quarts of green beans out of my garden and canned.  Or the number of hummingbirds that grace my feeders every year. Visits from friends.  Word of cancers seemingly cured. Notes from old friends that I thought I had lost touch with.  Surprise gifts in the mail.  You know... those things.  As I start the slide into  the end of my 60's decade,  I think about that girl... that silly foolish daredevil girl who didn't think twice about taking risks or expecting the biggest best things in life.  I have traveled in my middle aged life and seen some pretty remarkable stuff.  Been all over this country and visited a few more.  Most of it was never as exciting as the first few times though, and I guess that's the way of it.  I miss the adrenaline rushes and even the chaos. Today I have to choose which things I might try to get done instead of jumping into life with both feet.  I'm tired.  And I'm starting to feel old.  I hate that most of all. 

  So... I am trying to learn to grow old gracefully and some days I fail miserably.  I stomp and raise my fists at the sky and yell... because of the limitations I have to deal with daily.  Other days I sit comfortably on the porch in a rocking chair with a new book and marvel that a) I survived my life, and b) that I am as comfortable as I am doing next to nothing.  

  It's an interesting  thing, isn't it ?   And now, having just celebrated our 28th anniversary, I am headed into the kitchen to cook another Monday night supper. I was musing the other day about how many meals I have cooked in 28 years, but it made me dizzy. lol  Tonight I have pounded and marinated chicken breasts in Italian dressing.  I will cook them on the little Foreman grill and accompany them with a quinoa salad and a steamed vegetable medley. I will take pictures of the food, with the idea that someday I might write a cookbook. And then I look at the calendar. But hey-- who knows ? I am proof that absolutely ANYTHING can happen, right ?