25 Years

Today is my 25^th wedding anniversary. By coincidence, it’s also my husband’s. It’s like we planned it or something.

By tradition, 25 years of wedded bliss is celebrated as the “Silver Anniversary.” Neither one of us is very romantic — we have a much more practical bent plus we’re lazy. So very lazy. But this year I thought I’d try to surprise him with something different so I hopped online to find some ways to celebrate.

These are some of the ideas I found:

• Use sparkly silver glitter on flowers, cards, centerpieces, gift wrap, balloons, etc. Set the table with a paper silver tablecloth, rent china and crystal with a silver or chrome trim, use silver looking votive candles, place flowers in silver colored vases.

…. Or I could sprinkle glitter on the four-day-old pile of newspapers that has become our centerpiece. Maybe lighting them on fire would add a cozy, romantic touch.

• Toast one another with Champagne.

…. We already do this one. A lot. But mostly just when we toss another beer bottle in the trashcan, causing a lovely clinking sensation. Or is that when an angel gets its wings?

• Plan a picnic with paper silver-colored plates and cups.

…. Maybe, but neither one of us actually wants to go on a picnic in November in Colorado. But I’ll certainly consider planning one. The gift, I suppose, would be when I laid out the plans, saw his horrified face, then told him he didn’t have to go. Priceless.

• Purchase tickets for a movie, sports event, concert, theatre, etc. and wrap with a silver ribbon or place in a silver box.

…. We do this all the time. We tend to wrap them up in credit card receipts, though.

• Plan a trip to Silver Springs in Maryland or Florida, Silverstrand Beach in California or Ireland, or to a Silver Mine.

…. Or we could find everything on Netflix with Ron Silver, Sarah Silverman, Alicia Silverstone and Phil Silvers and have a marathon.

• Put together a CD with songs from the era of the marriage date.

…. Um … that’s pretty much all the music we have.

• Assemble a memory photo album with pictures highlighting 25 years together. Include the wedding, children, grandchildren, friends, trips taken together, homes lived in, etc. A nice addition is to include stories from children and friends.

…. Feeling smug about this one as we’ve been making photo albums for more than 25 years. We never look at them, however, because if you disturb the dust you sneeze for a month. (And really? People need to be told what to put in a photo album??)

• Create a poem, write it in silver ink, and display it in a silver colored frame.

…. I tried this one, but I’m not sure —

There once was a couple from Denver

Who loved to watch Netflix like “Ben Hur”

They secured a good date

But the mailman’s too late

And they couldn’t quite find a new vendor

• Put together a family quilt comprised of each square done by a family member or close friends.

…. Okay, just let me get started. Probably won’t take too long. I have a couple hours till dinner.

• Make a wish tree. You can use a big branch that you paint silver and decorate with silver ribbons, ornaments etc. Fill the branches with pictures of major events in your life, people who love and cherish you as well as tickets for a trip, travelers checks, gift certificates for different events and restaurants you could use on a trip, etc.

…. This one baffles me. What exactly would you be wishing for? That your life was different and didn’t have all these icky events and people who love you? That your anniversary was closer to Christmas so you wouldn’t have to haul yet another big tree into your house? That you could actually spend the travelers checks and gift certificates instead of impaling them on a dead branch in your living room? Pass.

None of these really speak to me as the best way to celebrate our 25 official years together.

Instead, I think I’ll find a shiny quarter — so simple, yet so symbolic — and we’ll flip it.

Heads does the laundry, tails cleans the kitchen.

Bonus photos!

This photo doesn’t do it justice, but see this enormous train and veil? It weighed at least 75 pounds and took 14 festively dressed Guatemalan children to wrestle it into place. But it segues nicely into the next photo, one of my favorites ….

That’s me and my dad trying to squeeze through the church doors without wrecking the dress or any of the Guatemalan children. Our hearts weren’t bursting with love for the photographer just then. It makes me laugh every time I remember it. I’m just glad the music was loud enough to cover our cursing.

What do you think makes for a worthy 25^th Anniversary celebration?

How To Be 78 Years Old

I recently had the opportunity to spend both quality and quantity time with my mother while she recovered from surgery. Her recovery took about eight seconds — for which I’m very thankful — but then I got snowed in at her house.

Here’s a photo of her bedquarters. [Get it?? Like headquarters?? Oh, I crack me up.]

From this command center she was able to direct and supervise all activities. Like me clearing two feet of snow off my car.

Spending this much time in her home was illuminating because I hadn’t lived with my mother since about 1982. Also because for about that same amount of time, I’ve been the oldest person I’ve lived with.

My mother has taught me many valuable lessons over the years, some of which I’ll share.

• Don’t giggle and fidget in church, but if you can’t help yourself, scoot over near another family so as not to shame us.

• Red wine vinegar is not the same as red wine.

• When arriving home after a long car trip, no one uses the bathroom until the car is unpacked.

• If you pay a kid a quarter for every tick they find on themselves after camping, they’re likelier to inspect their nooks and crannies more diligently. Plus, they’ll also check the dog.

As you can see, she’s a wise and wonderful woman.

And now she’s taught me something else … how to be a 78-year-old.

If you would like to act 78 years old, this will get you started…

1. Get up at 4 a.m., make a pot of coffee and read for three hours. Then go back to bed, making it seem like you get up early AND sleep late simultaneously.
2. Upon waking, immediately turn on the TV and make a full pot of coffee.
3. Eat constantly, but only tiny dabs of this or that.
4. Coffee, coffee and more coffee.
5. Watch TV but only for about 90 seconds at a time because everything reminds you of a story … or something you need to remember … or a question you’ve been wondering about for several years. Glance wistfully at your computer, knowing all answers live there, but also knowing said answers prefer to hide from you.
6. Turn the coffeepot off.
7. Two minutes later, brew a cup of tea.
8. Make sure you are — this appears to be of the utmost importance — make sure you are AT ALL TIMES within three feet of a box of Kleenex. If you think you’ll breach that perimeter, pluck a couple and shove them into your pocket or your sleeve or between two buttons on your shirt.
9. If you don’t bathe by noon, just take a “PTA Bath” reminding yourself that the mailman doesn’t care how you look. [Hint: The A stands for armpits, but the P and the T are not words an elderly woman with a proper upbringing should say. Except to her daughter. Who will crack up and tell all her friends what a hoot it is when old ladies lose their inhibitions.]
10. More coffee.
11. Even though you’ve cooked two-and-a-half million chickens for Sunday dinner in the last 50+ years, confess you never really liked to eat fried chicken. This makes your daughter feel guilty. Especially after she buys fried chicken to stock the fridge during your recovery.
12. When recovering from surgery, eschew stairs, Scrabble and salt. But not sherry.

My mom rocks.

What will you do when you are 78 years old?

Halloween Pets 2

I posted some Halloween pets yesterday, too. I’m a bit ashamed to say I’m a grown woman who takes great delight in animals wearing clothes. I was going to say it started with Wishbone, but it occurs to me I have photos somewhere of our Golden Retriever and our German Shepherd wearing sundresses and beads.

Don’t judge me!

Okay. I think I got it out of my system. I think my favorite in this bunch is the Pilgrim and the Indian. Yours?

They Love Us Anyway

As if it’s not bad enough we make them eat out of a bowl on the floor, we do this to them too …

Favorite? I have more for tomorrow …

Changed My Mind

I decided not to move my blog so just ignore the indecisive blogger waving her arms like a madwoman behind the curtain there. It wasn’t because it was too difficult … well, it might have been, but I didn’t get that far. I’m starting up a new enterprise which you’ll hear about in due course and I thought it would make sense to move this blog to practice with all the bells and whistles at the new place.

Not so much.

So I’ll just wait and start up the new one in the new place.

Curious about my traffic while I wasn’t posting, I checked my stats. Imagine my surprise that I get just as many readers when I post as when I don’t. About 100/day.

What might that mean?

One Moment, Please …

Just a heads up to all my loyal readers. And to you not-so-loyal ones, too.

I’m switching this blog over from wordpress.com to wordpress.org for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with today. I have absolutely no clue as to how to accomplish this lofty goal, however, so I might be floating around the bloggy heavens for ten minutes or ten days.

I hope it’s closer to ten minutes, but that’s probably not quite realistic as I’m going to eat lunch now. I don’t work through my lunch. I sometimes lunch through my work, but never the reverse.

I guess all I can do is guarantee I’ll see ya’ll somewhere on the flip side. For those of you who subscribe or visit BeckyLand on an RSS feed, if there is anything you need to do to continue your daily fix of The Becky, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Wish me luck!

Where Is Matt?

What is it about this video that makes me cry every time I watch it?

But these outtakes make me laugh??

My new favorite emoticon

\\\\\\///////

( @@ )

(   )

~

It’s a little fussy, but, oh well. I don’t get out much.

Don’t you think it kinda looks like me?

Extreme Sheepherding

Is there anything YouTube and Welsh shepherds can’t do???

Seven Months

If I told you how many people visit my blog specifically to read about the damage I inflicted on my pinkie toe, you would shout, “YOU LIE!” on the floor of Congress and collect scads of money from my opponents.

Seriously.

So here’s an update.

It’s been almost seven months since it looked like this …

Do know what can happen in seven months?

• A kid can go through Navy boot camp, graduate from Hospital Corps School, and get all settled in Okinawa.

• Whitney Houston can earn some kind of record for not changing out of her pajamas. (It’s unofficial, but I think I might have her beat. She has so little, though, I’ll give her this one.)

• You can serve your term in federal prison for bilking more than $10,000 from a program to help people whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Rita.

• If you’re India, your gold imports can plunge 29% as rising prices cool jewelry demand.

• You can break every single one of your New Year’s Resolutions many times over.

• You can gestate a baboon, several chickens, a tiger, a muskrat, a porcupine, a rhesus monkey, a chinchilla, a kangaroo, a red fox, an opossum, a puma, a parrot, a lion, a tiger AND a bear ….

But your toe would still look like this …

“Why don’t you care about my toe yet?” she whined.