No I’m not writing about my Father, and I’m not going to any NASCAR races. If you do however, you will see the Go Daddy endorsement on the car of one of the drivers, and no,the driver is not a Daddy being told to Go, because the driver is a she, she is Danica Patrick. So who is Daddy, and where are we cheering him on to go? Actually, I don’t know why the name, all I know is I love their company. www.godaddy.com is a web service. You can purchase a domain,in fact many domains if you want. www.bestvillagesblog.com is my domain name….several people have asked me about blogging, and the first thing you have to do is register your domain. It is inexpensive and Go Daddy makes it really easy to do. I have interacted several times with them over the phone, and you get really prompt courteous service. Anything I have called about is addressed in less than a few minutes, with very satisfactory results.When you first call they even ask would you like to silent the music while waiting? I didn’t and the music was great..it was music from the silent film era, so you conjured up what was happening, I wanted to leap from my chair and start doing the Charleston. When organizations do things right it’s amazing how good it makes you feel.  Perhaps that’s why we love living in The Villages,  they did things right and it makes us feel soooo  good.

I was recently asked why do you write your blog, what is the purpose?  To be honest, right now it is in its’ infancy and I’m not sure in what direction it will go.  I love the Villages, I love to write, I enjoy writing about the past, but the present is really fun with everything that is  going on around me.  I am a curious person by nature, and like to know how, why and where, and my blog will include miscellaneous numbers and information, things I know I like having or knowing.   I am in awe of the many activities and  in awe of the fantastic volunteers, and enjoy writing about them.  My blog reaches out to residents of the Villages, but also to my friends in the New York metropolitan area. I hope that through my blog they get to see all the fun I am having, and how much they are missing.  Many years ago, while a stay at home Mom, I had a column in our local paper that kept people informed about what was happening in our immediate neighborhood and our school district. Perhaps I’ve joined the world of technology and my blog replaces the old newspaper column, I’m not sure. I have a lot of ideas; a Guest blogger from time to time, interesting people column,  Around the Pool chatter, I’m open right now to questions and I’ll try to get the answers, or maybe I already know the answer.  If you want to publicize a special event I would be happy to do that.   There are many windows in The Villages, and behind every window is a story.  I hope to bring many of them to you, for your enjoyment. I guess I would have to say that my purpose is to have fun…I’m having fun and I hope you are too. 

My thirst for knowledge went way overboard this week, and not so sure I should share this,  but I will.  I love the Lifelong Learning College and have attended quite a few classes there, from art to writing, from Kabbalah to self-improvement.  Some I have taken because I want to get better at certain things, some because I want to know more about certain things, and some I take because I really like the instructor, and will sign up for any number of her classes, and have never been disappointed.   This past week I out did myself and went to four different classes.  By the end of the week I felt like I was back in school again full time.  I did have a good time, and am not complaining at all.  The problem I’m having is with one of my selections.  I must have thought it was something I needed to know, something I had heard talked about on TV and in any number of magazines.  It was something that was going to be good for me, maybe save my life, at the very least it was going to make me more vibrant, my skin was going to be younger looking, my hair shinier, I was going to have more energy, I was going to sleep better and if that is not enough, good for my heart and my bones, even my teeth.  Who could resist this class?  The morning of my class, my friend Carole asked me what I was up to today.  Oh, I have a class.  I still was enthused about it, until I said it out loud.  What class are you going to?  A class on Green Smoothies.  You’re taking a green smoothie with you?  No, that is what I am going to learn.   I was in my water aerobic class when I revealed this information, and it spread like wild fire.  Another of my friends makes them all the time and she said you could have stopped by my house and I would have made one for you.  Their reaction reminded me of my son’s reaction when I said I was going to take a class on how to use my Kindle.  Mom read the tutorial, you can do it and if  it really puzzles you, call me.  I’m not sure what his reaction to my Green Smoothie class would be, well on second thought,  I think I know what it would be.   I did attend, and I did learn a lot about the benefits of the Smoothie in the first half of the class, and in the second half we got to taste four or five samples, made all different ways, using all different greens and fruit combinations.  I came home armed with information, and a lot of recipes, so I felt it was worth it.  In retrospect, I must have been either hungry or thirsty when I browsed through the catalog.   I think the following saying should be revised to… never go food shopping or catalog browsing, on an empty stomach.  I might add that when you do that, you do come home with lots of good things you might not have bought.  Same goes for the class, I learned a lot of good things, and had fun to boot.

I had my first child, a boy. Times were very different then..every mother looked like Betty Crocker and the babies all looked like the Gerber baby. Whenever you asked someone how their baby was, they would say wonderful, the baby’s fine, couldn’t be better. Everything was beautiful. All families were like Ozzie and Harriet, and this is what you went into childbirth thinking. What an awakening. A few weeks into this lifetime commitment, when asked how’s the baby, I would answer honestly,  this is not what I expected, it borders on being a nightmare.   Where is that happy little Gerber baby?   Mine slept nights, but didn’t  sleep a wink during the day and there was nothing to do with him. You have to remember, all we had was a hand held rattle (that the Mother jiggled) to amuse a baby. That rattle routine would last maybe one minute and then you were left comforting the cries of boredom for the rest of the day. There was no mechanical apparatus to swing them, rock them, bounce them. You were it, and at the end of the day you were exhausted.    Friends would admit that it wasn’t as wonderful as they had said, but didn’t want to scare me. I think it was more, misery loves company. Fortunately for him and me, it was not long before I fell head over heels in love with my little Rumpelstiltskin, so much so that two years later when anticipating the birth of a second child, I wanted a boy, which I did have. But to my first born I want to take this opportunity to wish him a Happy Birthday, and thank him for all the life lessons I have learned through him. I might add his brother Pete added to the list of  lessons also.  Happy Birthday Joe, have a great day.

I can’t believe it happened to me.  For the past several summers we have been returning to the lake community we had retired to, and rented a home for a month. (Sean makes it through two to three weeks and then has Village withdrawal and has to get back, and that’s OK)   It has been wonderful, as I have had my three grandsons with me for the entire month. Actually I have a fourth grandson who is older, is working, has a  girlfriend and has no time to hang out at the lake.  The three with me were teenagers this past summer: two of them were 16 years old and one was 14 years old.  It was a great opportunity for me to reconnect with them, as their parents brought them July 1st and visited them week-ends.   I had very few ground rules, as I was not a parent but a grandparent and that gave me, and them,  special privileges.  I did not monitor soda consumption, until the 2nd week when we were going through cases of soda and they were flying high still at midnight.  Even without soda the kitchen hummed at night as they were very industrious making popcorn, smores and peanut butter cups, and we were flying through Hershey bars, graham crackers and jars of peanut butter at an alarming speed.  Good fun though.  I also did not have a rule about pajamas, mainly because I had forgotten  teenagers love to lounge around all day in them. With that said, the rule was instituted that there would be no pajamas after 12 noon.  They were really good about that;  pajamas, bathing suits, clothes until dark, then pajamas.   The first year we were together I nicknamed them My Pajama Boys of Summer.   Then it happened to me.  This past fall I was in one of the stores in Spanish Springs and they were having a sale on women’s pajamas.  Between the sale price plus  a coupon I purchased them for more than I ever spent on a pair in my life.  I find that at this age, when we do become extravagant we are real good at justifying our actions and we easily convince ourselves we deserve it..we worked hard all our lives.  These pajamas were so expensive I still could not justify them, so I had the clerk gift wrap them and had Sean give them to me for Christmas.  He will pay anything not to Christmas shop.  When I put those pajamas on Christmas morning, I felt like I had reached the pinnacle of my retirement…they were sooo comfortable. Maybe you don’t have pajamas but you know what I am talking about, it is that comfortable something you put on that you would not go to the store in, if you take them off you put them right back on just as soon as you can. If you have something on your feet, you wouldn’t go to the store with them either.  This March I will be visiting my Grandsons and I can hardly wait to  join them on the couch in my pajamas.  They will probably ask me what took me so long to realize what comfort is all about.   I’ll allow them to think they are smarter than I am, and I won’t tell them I can wear mine all day.  They will have to be a lot older and wiser to find that out.  I’ll share a secret though, I have another gift box wrapped that Sean is giving me for Valentine’s Day, because you just can’t have one.

Exercise Carole.  If you live in The Villages long enough, you know exactly what I am saying.  We tend to tag our friends’ names, so everyone will know who we are referring to.   Before moving here my friends were Lynn, Jo, Patti, Carol, Bernice, Rossa, Karen etc.   If I spoke of Patti everyone knew who I was talking about.  However, now because of involvements in clubs, organization and activities,  it seems we have many friends with the same name.  Take Carole, I have my original friend Carol from New Jersey, then Exercise Carole who I met in water aerobics, then  Estevez Carol who became a friend and lives on Estevez Dr., and a newly added Carole from N.J. who moved into a Premier section, so she is referred to as Premier Carole.  I liken it to the Barbie phenomenon.  There was the original Barbie, then Holiday Barbie, Circus Barbie, Dynasty Barbie and so on. I really hadn’t realized how much this is done until I overheard a conversation and the name Pat was mentioned.  The other person said Pat who?  Pickleball Pat, oh that Pat and the conversation proceeded.   We all use the words big and little, and when used in that context we mean height, 5’8″ or 5’2″.  We never use fat or skinny, just as there would never be a Fat Barbie or a Skinny Barbie.  At many of the activities there are name tags,  some temporary, that are good for one use and thrown away and others that are permanent, tags that you can buy and when not in use, are lined up like soldiers on our dressers.  Every once in a while you will go to an activity and some will have tags and others won’t, and it isn’t long before your curiosity gets the best of you and you inquire, how do I get a name tag?  It usually involves something special you have done for the group.   There is only one exception for me to this rule.There are many Kathys, but only one that is the membership chair for the Village Homeowners Association (huge job), Florida Master Gardener, chair of the Bookworm Book Club (does phenomenal job) President and Founder of the Staten Island Club, Treasurer of the Marion Co. Rose Society (best Garden Tours ever) and membership chair of  The Village Birders…you may think we call her Bookworm Kathy, or Rose Kathy, Homeowner Kathy or Birder Kathy…no this Kathy,  for all she does for our community,  is  referred to as Kathy Porter.  I know of no one else that is more deserving of  a last name than  Kathy is.  Thanks Kathy Porter,  for enriching our lives so.

Meet in the Courageous Room at Lake Miona Recreation Center.  It is so fitting that the Wannabe Writers meet in the Courageous Room.  I find it takes courage to write.  I don’t know if all people who write need encouragement, but I know I don’t feel good about my writing, but I get a lot of encouragement, so that keeps me going.  I love to write for my own pleasure, and have been doing it  even when I was too young to be trusted with a crayon or pencil.  I know this because my Mother would tell the story that I apparently was old enough to go into the bathroom alone, but not for long.  This one day I went in and locked the door.  My Mother kept knocking on the door, are you coming out, not yet…after she made several attempts and I still did not come out, she inquired what are you doing?  I’m busy, I replied. Busy?  Busy doing WHAT?  I replied, I’m writing (I was entirely too young to even know my letters, but I was writing anyway.) My Mother said she paniced thinking I had gotten a crayon and was now scribbling on the entire bathroom wall.  I still was not coming out, and as she pursued her line of questioning, and conjoling,  I told her  I didn’t have a pencil, or a crayon.  Well then how are you writing?  I’m writing things down in my head.    On second thought, maybe I wasn’t a young writer at all, but perhaps a young thinker.  The Villages has many Writer’s Groups that meet.  I have not had the courage to attend one yet, but perhaps may just go to the Courageous Room, it sounds like a safe place to start.   There also are many, many authors with published books that live here. As a matter of fact,  my favorite show is coming up on February 4th at the Lake Miona Recreation Center…Authors and Book Lovers Showcase…from 9-2.  Each Village author has a table with their book or books they have written; you get to see the book, but more importantly, you get to meet the creator.  The first Showcase I attended, I was absolutely amazed, as always, at the variety of talent our Village neighbors  have.  History books, Civil War, World War II, children’s books, cook books, mysteries, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, sports, I could go on and on.  When I really think about it, when compared to all the talented writers, it is probably fairer to say I was a young thinker.