This you tube video is made by The Villages and you will see perhaps some of the people you have met or worked with…the Morse family, Sales Representatives, Golf pros and neighbors.   I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

in The Villages. When retired there is plenty of time on your hands, and what do you do when that happens? You party. I guess we are never too old to enjoy a good time. I started thinking about this the other evening as I was leaving a Christmas Party. Someone said, well this is the first of many. We all laughed and said how right you are. I heard it again last night. We were out to dinner  and our friend mentioned that the night before he had gone to a Birthday Party and there were about 60 people in attendance.   The surprised Birthday Boy, celebrating his 75th,  gave a very moving speech that he had lived in his last community for over 30 years and only 1 year ago he moved to The Villages. He went on to say that in his last community he did not know 60 people that would come to a party for him, but here in just 1 year he has met so many people through his activities that felt they wanted to celebrate his big day.  He was very touched and so were those in attendance, as they could all identify with his sentiment.  Moving is a very stressful event, and moving away from your roots,  your children and grandchildren  adds to it, so does the fact that you never imagined taking up permanent residency in Florida and you are doing it at an age where you don’t want to make life changing decisions.  You are retired,  you don’t want to think of stressful things any more, you left those at the office or said good-bye to them when the children left home.  But here you are making them anyway, against your better judgement and yet, almost the minute you move here, you realize that my judgement is pretty good, I can still make good decisions and guess what happens?  Your new friends are your new family and they love to be  there for you especially when it comes to celebrating.  Birthdays are big, but with the Holidays the parties are in abundance, just as someone mentioned, the first of many to come.  The invitation to this party came from someone I met at water aerobics, today is a party with my neighbors at one of the Country Clubs,  next week-end I’m attending an Open House party given  by a couple that have been here just a year.  I think her guest list is up to 90 people.  Then there is Sean’s Ambassadors’ Christmas party at Cattle Baron Restaurant and I am having my own Open House the week before Christmas and lastly but not leastly, a progressive dinner with my New Jersey friends that get together all year long on Thursday nites. January is a busy month also, as some celebrations take place after the New Year.  The get togethers are different here.  We are done impressing anybody, we dress very casually and we are normally back home by 10 o’clock, sometimes earlier.  Also, there is no pressure, if you don’t wish to attend parties that’s ok, you don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t want to go.  When we moved to The Villages we left the stress behind and also the guilt, we came here to enjoy our retirement in the sunshine and we  respect all  the different ways people do that.  The biggest thing is we are here and we can celebrate our choices.  That’s the best celebration of all.

I never tire or cease to be amazed at the accomplishments of The Villages and/or their residents. I can imagine that some people who have never visited The Villages think that I am just a person who likes to brag all the time. Oh this is the best, and that is the best, and I have the best, and you don’t have the best, and I could go on and on. However, to defend my position,  I know that anyone who lives in The Villages has heard many times over, you can never imagine all that is here, you have to come and experience it yourself.  Nothing can describe it.  Well, I try to explain but I know some of you get tired of so much wonderfulness.  But how can I not be proud of accomplishments, how can I not say I have the best people living amongst us when an individual, who is 90 years old and a  member of The Villages Archery Club  just qualified for the 2013 Summer U.S. National Senior Games in Cleveland Ohio this summer.  He did it last week-end by putting on a remarkable performance at the Florida Senior Games State Championships in Polk County.   He set a new Florida record in the compound fingers division with a score of 825 out of a possible 900. Compound fingers division means you have to shoot with your fingers on the string. That in its’ self, sounds hard to me.   Each archer shoots a total of 90 arrows and gets 10 points each time he is within 3 inches of the target.  All I can say it WOW, that’s a lot of arrows.   Imagine just keeping your arms in a shooting position 90 times, and imagine how steady you have to be, and then that is only 1% of the skill, the other 99% is mental as attested to by the President of the Archery Club.  The President went on to say, ” there is no one in the United States that can beat him at his age. I’m pretty confident the records he is setting in his age group will stand forever. ”   See, I’m not bragging, it’s just true,  we have the best.  Congratulations to our 90 year old neighbor and best of luck to him this summer at The Nationals.  We will all be rooting for him.

Every once in a while Sean’s actions remind me of a time when my sons were growing up and they were young enough to tell them what they had to do. They would do it, perhaps not willingly or happily, but they did it. One of those things were, eat your dinner, and they did it. Well last night I baked pork chops with an apricot glaze (really Apricot jam on top). To start off with before I even got them to the table, when I was taking them out of the oven I spilled the melted Apricot jam all over the oven, so the house filled up with the smell of a flaming burn barrel. Not real conducive to eating. Anyway, we sat down to eat, the phone rang and a neighbor needed a hand doing something. He willingly jumped up and said I will be right there. He had taken only one bite and that was out of the Apricot glazed pork chop or better described pork chop with apricot jam on top. As he was hastening to get out I said eat your dinner before you go. He immediately responded with an infatic NO..that was it..just NO. I’ll save it, another NO, don’t save it. I should back up a little and say that there are a few things I have learned about Irish men. They love meat and potatoes and carrots and turnips and maybe a few more things, oh apples and apple pie. They do not like spices, salt and pepper that’s it. It’s really very easy to cook for them, that is if you stick to their likes. The other thing is they are very happy, find humor in everything, and make humor out of anything, sometimes to the point of will you please get serious. However, if they do not like something which is very rare, they are very stubborn, or should I say very, very stubborn. They dig their heels in and there is no turning them around. A pork chop with Apricot jam on top provoked the stubborn No, I’m not eating my dinner. I gave up easily as I knew I was not going to win this, but of course disappointed as I looked at his entire meal untouched, except for one bite. I had to get my two cents in and reminded him that he ate the pork chop at Evans Prairie Country Club that had an orange glaze sauce on it that he said was delicious. He looked totally puzzled as to what does that have to do with this pork chop. When he realized that I had tried to duplicate that sauce, and down deep I knew that I had failed, we burst out laughing and we keep laughing every time we think of it. Evans Prairie”s pork chop?   I do have to say their Pork Chop with Orange Sauce is absolutely delicious.  So delicious that even a meat and potatoe Irish man liked it. He made me promise not to try to duplicate other restaurants’ recipes, he said he will just take me there. So it was a win for me, he didn’t eat his dinner but I get to go to dinner in the future.  Try Evans Prairie Country Club, it is the newest of Country Clubs and as everything else in The Villages, it just keeps getting better. And it did.

is the most difficult part of living and it  comes in many forms; loss of a loved one, a job, loss of a home, a pet, loss of good health.   Normally I have no problem writing my blog, I see things or hear things and I am off and running, or should I say writing.   This week I have had a difficult time concentrating, not only with my blog but I am trying to finish decorating, finish shopping, finish wrapping and finish mailing, and I am accomplishing nothing.  I am really annoyed with myself but am doing nothing about it.   Along with writing I also talk to myself and questioned what my problem was.  I traced my behavior back to a phone call I received last week from my best friend in New Jersey.  She was crying hysterically that her son had passed away suddenly from a heart attack.  We cried together for as long as she could stay on the phone and it seems that the sadness I feel is so insignificant  as compared to the pain and heartache she is going through.  Loss is such a personal thing and as much as we think we understand we really don’t.  If we try to make reason of it we can’t, and I believe it leaves us feeling paralyzed and helpless and  questioning, in this case, our own family’s morality.  I think my lack of enthusiasm to complete anything is an effect of that phone call.  I can not get her or her son off my mind.  My friend’s life is no longer the same, as that is what loss does, and if there could ever be anything good to say about it, we would have to say it  brings us closer, it makes us pause and reflect on what we had and what we have.  Our memories keep us going and our thoughts of what that person did, or said or would want us to do, are always there.  Loss teaches us to appreciate,  appreciate what we had but also to appreciate what we have.  I think it brings us together like no other event.  I know now I could not write as I could not push away the feelings I was having.  Those same  feelings have made me open my eyes to those around me and to appreciate every thing I have…to not get caught up in all the hustle and bustle,  but be aware of what this season gives all of us,  and that is the opportunity to reach out to others and be thankful for our friends and family, our health, our homes, our jobs even if our job is retirement, and to cherish our  memories and especially build new ones, as they are our best medication for healing. Thanks for being a part of my healing and I am now back to blogging.

is alive and well in The Villages, oh I mean the True Crime Book Club. I belong to the Bookworm Book Club and along with 75 plus woman attend the monthly meeting, which is never disappointing. Normally a book club consists of a small group of woman meeting most often in someone’s home to discuss a book.  We, on the other hand, meet in the Bacall Recreation Center and sit at card tables. The meeting is an hour an a half long, so for the first part of the meeting the book is discussed at the table. The facillatator sometimes will have placed several questions about the book that they would like that table to discuss.  The second part of the meeting  is opened  to discussion, which is done in a very orderly manner.  If previous questions have been placed on the tables, then each table is asked to share their answers with the group.   The one thing that I particularly love about this group is that no matter what book we discuss there is someone in the group that has had a personal connection to the subject.  Either themselves personally, or a relative or grandparent.  For example we read In The Garden of Beasts last month, which is about Berlin in the early 1930’s at the time Hitler was just rising to power.  There were several members that had personal stories, either experienced or told to them by relatives, that added another perspective to the subject. Another thing that is great about this group we will go to lunch afterwards, and we many times go to a restaurant that relates to the book.   We went to a German restaurant and feasted on Brockwurst and  Weiner Snitzel last month.    As I often do I got carried away with my own story and you are probably wondering what this has to do with True Crime Book Club. That is another club and I have said many times that I would like to start going to their meetings as I have heard they are really good.  In the case of their club there are apparently many members that were either Policeman, Detectives, Prosecutors, Judges or someone that has worked in that field…not as a criminal though.  I know several of them have written their own True Crime books, so I can only imagine the discussions at their meetings.  I’ve been told that at their meeting this Sunday they are bringing  Suzanne Barr from New York City, to be a guest speaker and she will discuss her book Fatal Kiss.  She is considered a fiction writer but also writes mystery and true crime.   She also is a New York Times bestselling ghost writer, but they said not to expect her to say who she writes for.  I would imagine that just might be a crime if she did.  It is open to eveyone and in order to register call Diane at 751-7392. It will be Dec. 2nd at 1:30 pm at Colony Cottage Recreation Center.  There is a $2.00 fee to be paid at the door for this special meeting. Perhaps I’ll see you there, I will be wearing my trench coat, hat and dark glasses.

Is Red to me. I guess I never gave it much thought as to why it is called Black Friday. I think I thought it referred to standing in long lines, which would be very unpleasant, difficult, dismal or in other words described as Black. As you see I didn’t put much thought into it until this year. We celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving at home and as the football games rolled on,  I read the paper. I guess in the past I never read the paper on Thanksgiving and I am now starting to see bargains. Poinsettias for 88 cents. $50 items are now $14.99, wow, as I leafed through the circulars my excitement escalated. Now they have me hooked. I set aside the stores I wanted to visit and saw that one opened at 12am Nov. 23rd. Oh boy I better get there. The wheels are now churning, don’t I fall asleep watching TV and wake up about 12am and go off to bed, I’ll get dressed and head out. Well, I woke up and went to bed, thinking it might not be safe but really wanting to jump in my warm bed. I wake up early around 5am every day, I’ll go then, there won’t be many. Well I woke up at 5am but really wanted to have coffee and relax a little. I did get out by 6 am and walked right into my first store where there were no lines, however I was the last to get ten 88 cent poinsettias. That made it worth getting here.   At my second store there also were no lines and few people in the store. I shopped for about an hour and got many bargains. Everything was in fives – five men’s, five women’s, five children’s…as I was leaving I walked right up to the register and checked out, no lines. However, I noticed the crowd swelling and you could barely get through the isles.  I did have to dodge and weave to get out of the store and that made me feel good as it was a reminder that this was Black Friday. As I drove home I thought Black Friday was not so Black, it starts around 7:30 am in the Villages, no camping out for us. We did our time in yesteryear. When I got home and unloaded my car I really felt I had accomplished something worthwhile and exciting, to think  that I had participated in Black Friday and it was not bad at all.  Until I read the paper today and it is called Black Friday as that is the day the Department Stores get out of the Red and into the Black. Well, if they went into the Black it must mean someone went into the Red.   Oh, that’s what they mean.   To add insult to injury, as Sean literally scratched his head he asked, why did you buy 10 poinsettias, I had to think for a minute, because they were 88 cents and the store is now in the Black and I’m in the Red.

to all my friends, new and old, and Happy Birthday Damian. 17 years old today and going for his driving license tomorrow. I can’t help but think of what I was doing when I was 17, it was a big footbal game day when we played our traditional Thanksgiving Day rival, Hawthorne (NJ) High School. It was always a little chilly, but it was always a great game, win or lose, as all the alumni were home from college and came back to the Thanksgiving game to reconnect with all their friends. The loudest hoots, howls and squells came from the most recent graduates, when they saw their friends. Everyone wore a great big yellow crysthamum mounted on brown leaves with brown ribbon streamers. We wore them proundly. I haven’t seen one of those in many years. Memories, memories I could go on but I would probably get weepy, and I do have to get my turkey in the oven. Again, Happy Thanksgiving have a wonderful day with family and friends.