For the next five minutes as I flipped through the imagined hardships of the author I laughed my fool head off. I had people in other aisles breaking out in laughter because of how hard I was laughing.
It was just so darned funny to see my life in comic mode. The feeling of having toilet paper stuck to your heel while a dog lifts its leg and pees on your briefcase, as you open a letter with the words "you're fired" on it. I laughed so hard that the black cloud hanging over my head rose up and blew away. I walked into that store with it raining down on me and left lighter and straighter, stepping out into the sunshine I have been missing for three weeks. Finally.
Thanks everyone for helping me to get to this stage with the kind words and cards and stories and pictures and love. I think that little book was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Now things can begin to resume again.
I am back in the writer's chair and trying to plow my way through Book Three, titled Running From The Cancer Cooties. It's memoirs, a collection of the Cancer Blogs from the past year. Amazing that it WILL be a year July 27th.
On that exact day, I will be here at the house surrounded by great friends- one flying up from Vancouver, one coming from New Zealand, a hand full already here. A Ladies Nite Out party will ensue two days later on the 29th. Lemon meringue pie martinis, non-alcoholic Saudi champagnes, wine of every colour. There will be a harmonica and guitar, singing, bon fire and remembering the days when we were in our thirties, feeling old, feeling fat, feeling the pressures of trying to do a thousand things at once and still keeping up the smile. I look back at that phase of my life now and wonder "what was I thinking?"
What did we know? What did we know? What do we know now?
I know that its one thing to say we should live life to the fullest and another to get busy doing it. I don't mean running harder and faster to pack more in. I mean making sure that when a moment arises, you grab it. Don't weigh out how much more work something will be. If it involves friends and making more memories, just do it. Put down your life for a moment and take the time to be with the people you love. You can never get back this exact stage of your life that you're in right now.
I know that whatever the excuse, we need to get together more often to celebrate life with our good friends now while we're able and alive instead of later at each other's funerals and services.
If there is one bit of advice I would like to leave my kids it's to surround yourself with good people. And then never let them go. In the world of Internet and e-mail and Skype, we are never further away than the time it takes us to turn on a computer.These people can make all the difference in your world.
Here are a few great quotes about friends:
A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. ~Lois Wyse
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself. ~Frances Ward Weller
A friend accepts us as we are yet helps us to be what we should. ~Author Unknown
Friends are relatives you make for yourself. ~Eustache Deschamps
You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job. ~Laurence J. Peter
A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be. ~Douglas Pagels
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. ~Elisabeth Foley
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer
It takes a long time to grow an old friend. ~John Leonard
It takes a long time to grow an old friend. ~John Leonard
06/02/02
"We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere."
---Tim McGraw
11/30/01
"I believe that friends are quiet angels who sit on our shoulders and lift our wings when we forget how to fly." ---Unknown
07/31/01
---Unknown
