The other day, Bill surprised me with a really pretty bouquet of flowers. There was no special occasion; he just saw them, thought they were pretty, and thought about me. Very sweet.

But it made me think about a funny true story.

When Bill first asked me on an official date (we had long been friends), I said no thank you. He asked me again a short time later, and my answer was the same. Finally he told me that he was going to send me a bouquet of flowers every day until I agreed to go on a date with him.

Of course you are, I thought cynically, not believing a word.

Until the next day when a beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to my office. And then the next day, another arrived. They kept coming, day after day. Sometime around mid-morning I would get a phone call from the receptionist.

“Your flowers have arrived,” she would cheerfully tell me.

My office started looking and smelling like a funeral parlor. I had roses, tulips, spring bouquets, flowering plants; you name it, I had it. In those days I shared an office with my boss, and every day he would beg me, “Please, Kristine, tell him you will go out with him. We’re running out of room.”

Finally, a full two weeks later, I called him and told him I would go out on a date with him. And the rest is history….

Have a great weekend.

Love can never more grow old,
Locks may lose their brown and gold;
Cheeks may fade and hollow grow,
But the hearts that love will know,
Never, never winter’s frost and chill;
Summer warmth is in them still. – Eben E. Rexford

The words above are from an old song that was popular in the late 19^th century called Silver Threads Among the Gold. For some reason, I remembered the words to that song and I assure you I was not alive in the late 19^th Century (though I’m sure my grandkids think I was).  I’m telling you, I am using up valuable brain cells storing this type of useless information.

They don’t write songs like this anymore. Instead, you have classics such as I Can’t Feel My Face. My other thought as I read the lyrics was that you don’t run across many young boys being named Eben these days. Trevor, yes. Eben, no.

Aging is an interesting phenomenon. Someone hit the nail on the head when they said Old age is always 10 years older than I am. I should attribute that quote to someone; however, the internet attributes it to three or four different people. I couldn’t figure it out, so I will simply put it out there. Because, Friends, isn’t it all too true? When you’re 8 years old, don’t you wish you could be grown-up like your 18-year-old sister, who you consider OLD. And it’s certainly true when you are in your 20s, 30s, and even older.

Bill and I began talking about this notion the other day. We figured out that when he and I got married, his mother was about the same age as he is now. A woman of some years. And Bill is, well, positively youthful!

My sister Bec was talking with her son Erik one day not long ago. In the course of their conversation, she mentioned that our mother was so young when she died. Erik asked her how old his nana was when she passed away. Sixty-eight years old, Bec responded. Erik’s reply? “I don’t think that’s that young.” Bec – uncharacteristically almost speechless — said, “You do understand, Son, that I am 65 years old.” Ah. There’s that.

All this is to say that today is Bill’s birthday, and he is 73 years young today.  The year Bill was born, the movie Casablanca was released. Gasoline was 15 cents a gallon. A house cost in the neighborhood of $3,700, which was a lot considering the average worker earned a little over $1,800 per year.

Bill has had a lot thrown at him in his life. Do you know how he would respond to that statement? “Who hasn’t?” He handles life with grace and dignity, which helps keep him young. He is one of the funniest people I know, and you know what they say about laughter and medicine. He is living proof. One of the greatest tributes to this astounding man is that my brother says he has fully admired two men in his life – our dad and Bill. I agree.

So, happy birthday to my husband, and I am sure in 15 years when I am writing my – well, whatever will have taken the place of the blog – he will still be young.

Cutting Up
Bill spent Tuesday morning cutting up an old recliner so that it would fit in the garbage can for pickup Tuesday afternoon. We are preparing for the arrival of some of his mom’s furniture since she is moving from her apartment into assisted living. Bill specializes in taking large pieces of furniture and cutting them into pieces small enough to fit in a garbage can. It’s quite remarkable, really. After we bought our lovely sofa in Arizona, he cut up the entire beat-up sofa we had been using. I noticed about two-thirds of the way through his project that he was using my bread knife. He doesn’t do that anymore.

Here Kitty Kitty
The other night Dave, Jll, and the cousins came for dinner. With Alastair in mind, I made a pumpkin poke cake. The recipe involves a yellow cake mix mixed with a can of pumpkin, baked and cooled. Once completely cooled, holes are poked into the cake with the end of a wooden spoon, and sweetened condensed milk is poured over the whole cake. Finally, it is finished off with whipped cream and toffee chips. I had Alastair in mind because I know he likes ALL THINGS PUMPKIN. If he drank lattes, he would undoubtedly be drinking Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks with almost everyone else that I know. While the others ate the cake, no one enjoyed it quite as much as Alastair. I say this because here is Maggie Faith’s take on the pumpkin poke cake: She ate the whipped cream and toffee chips off of the top. She poked around a bit on the cake, and then said in an objective, absolutely non-judgmental way (and I quote), “This looks like Sophie’s cat food.” Boom. I told her she should consider a career as a restaurant critic. However, not to be put off, Alastair immediately said, “I’ll eat it!” and did.

Not cat food.

Grease Pumpkin
Speaking of all things pumpkin, I elected to forgo my annual crabby why-is-everything-pumpkin-flavored-or-fragranced blog post. I don’t know why seeing pumpkin flavoring in everything annoys me, but it simply gets on my last nerve. I like pumpkin. Pumpkin pie is one of my favorites. I enjoy a piece of pumpkin bread or pumpkin muffins. For my part, I rather enjoyed the pumpkin poke cake. But really, can’t we have a few items in the fall that taste like apples? Or pears? Having said this, you will understand why something my sister Jen told me the other day made me laugh out loud. A friend of hers took her car in to get the oil changed. The company had a sign hanging above their front desk that read We now have pumpkin spice motor oil. Like me, someone else is sick of pumpkin spice everything.

Would it Kill You to Be Kind?
Yesterday I made a trip to Park Meadows Mall, about a 15 minute drive south of our house. Normally a 15-minute drive, that is. It turns out that there was road construction that involved the closure of one lane at the intersection of One Busy Street and Another Busy Street. Lane closures bring out the worst in people. You have those (like me) who get in the appropriate lane early. Then you have those who fly past so that they can get into the correct lane closer to the front of the line, thereby making those of us who follow the rules wait longer. Like they are more entitled. I am retired and had nowhere to be, so I tried to be patient, but it really began to get on my nerves. I wished I was driving a semi so that I could block their lane. It amused me that one of the people who flew past me had a vanity license plate that said Be Kind. Hmmm. Anyway, I finally got to the light, so all I lost was a bit of my time.

A Needling Question
While at the mall, I came upon a sight that sent me back in time. There was a man sitting in one of the chairs at the mall that are designed for partners of shoppers to relax and read or look at text messages. That is not an unusual sight, of course. But what was unusual was that the man was working on a big quilt. He was stitching away quite happily, and judging from the size of the quilt (which was pooled at his feet), he was nearly done. The sight made me smile, and it also made me think about something I did when I was in college. I was married to my first husband at the time, and we were both students. I took a lot of Women’s Studies classes (People, it was the 70s) though my major was Journalism. For one of my Women’s Studies classes, I had to do some sort of project that involved gender differences. So David and I went down to the Pearl Street Mall, a popular pedestrian shopping area in Boulder. David sat on the lawn in front of the courthouse and pretended to work on some sort of needlepoint project. My job was to sit back and observe people’s reaction to a man working on a needlepoint project. My recollection was that for the most part there was no reaction at all. After all, it was Boulder, Colorado. I wonder what I said in the paper that I wrote. And I wonder if my friend yesterday was helping his wife on a school project or just likes quilting.

Ciao!