by jphilo | Sep 14, 2015 | Family
Hey-ho, Camp Dorothy fans. This is your friendly camp activities director here with the promised update about the camp namesake’s 87th birthday party. First off, the camp activities director wants to give credit where credit is due. So readers should know that the birthday bash was not the brainchild of the camp activities director. Rather, the event was planned and executed to perfection by the camp director’s older sister.
Speaking of older sisters, the above photo catches older sister Dorothy and her younger sister Donna in a rare display of affection. As in they are actually touching. Only a side hug, to be sure, but still a big deal because we are not a family to engage willy-nilly in any sort of touchy-feelyness.
So the photo is quite a coup. Though the photographer had plenty of time to prepare for taking the picture. Because the sisters, one with her walker and the other on the arm of her nephew, evoked memories of Tim Conway’ Little Old Man routine as they moved into side hug range.
The camp director digresses. Back to the party, held on Labor Day Sunday, which was a rousing success. 30 people, including the camp’s namesake, four generations of family, and several friends, were in attendance. The birthday girl was the oldest party goer at age 87. The youngest was her great-grandson 5 months of age. She enjoyed an afternoon filled with conversation and, as far as the camp director could see, never stopped smiling.
Once the party was over much of the crowd–including Camp Dorothy’s namesake–went to her son and daughter-in-law’s house for supper. The birthday girl made a beeline for her favorite chair at their house, sat down, and made full use of her “queen for the day” status, expecting her children and grandchildren to wait on her hand and foot. Though we drew the line at cutting her toenails.
Queen Dorothy was worn out when her daughters took her to Vintage Hills and tucked her in bed for the night. The next morning she was smiling and ready to go when her oldest daughter picked her up for breakfast at her son and daughter-in-law’s house. She stayed through lunch, playing countless games of Uno and several rousing rounds of Catch Phrase.
Finally, smiling and sleepy, she called it a day. The camp director visited her a couple days later and found her still smiling. Then the camp director pulled out a package of thank you cards and announced it was time to get to work. Another Camp Dorothy update will be forthcoming when the cards are done, and she starts smiling again. Don’t hold your breathe. It could be a while.
by jphilo | Jul 28, 2015 | Daily Life
I recently celebrated a birthday. Not one of those momentous ones with a zero at the end. But getting close. Getting very, very close. Close enough to get me thinking about what’s to dislike and like about getting older. This week’s list hits the dislikes. But you’re invited to come back next week to see what’s to like about getting older too.
10. Getting older means not being able to eat as much as and that more of what’s eaten makes its presence known in uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing ways as it makes its merry way through and out of the digestive system.
9. Some people–and this may or may not include the author of this post–become less patient as they get older. Especially with a spouse–who may or may not be the Man of Steel.
8. Replace the word “patient” in #9 with “flexible.”
7. No matter how fit and trim a person is, aches and pains increase with age.
6. As do trips to the bathroom in the night time.
5. The older a person is, the harder it is to learn a foreign language.
4. Year by year, the number of opportunities a person “has missed it by that much”–to use the words of Maxwell Smart–increases. That realization is a source of sadness for opportunities missed that had the potential of accomplishing great good.
3. Getting older does not mean people worry about their children any less.
2. Being older means more times when a person’s heart torn in two when moving away from dear friends or when dear friends move away.
1. Being older means saying final good-byes to loved ones more and more frequently with each passing year.
What do you dislike about getting older? Leave a comment.
by jphilo | Sep 4, 2014 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
The little girl on the left is Mom’s sister, Ruth. The little girl on the right is Dorothy.
- To help Mom celebrate her 86th birthday yesterday, I treated her to lunch at Village Inn. She ordered pancakes.
- While she ate the pancakes, she told me about her sixth birthday, 80 years ago exactly. “It was my first day of first grade. My first day of school ever. The older kids–and they were all older kids–spent every recess giving me birthday spankings. It was awful.”
- As she ate she looked at me and said, “Do you know what I really want for my birthday? I want to go back to Pipestone and have Mom make pancakes for me.”
Who knew birthday pancakes could reduce the daughter of an 86-year-old woman to tears?
by jphilo | Aug 5, 2014 | Top Ten Tuesday
10. One of your earliest memories is of the pool party birthday when you turned five. Granted, it was only a kiddie pool with six inches of water in the side yard. But it was great fun. And as the photographs of the event show, you look pretty good in your swimsuit.
9. There’s never any homework to finish before the party begins.
8. In the same vein, parties never have to break up early because there’s school tomorrow.
7. Sometimes, your birthday coincides with your vacation, and you get to celebrate in far away places like Alaska, Idaho, Washington state, or your aunt and uncle’s farm in southwest Minnesota.
6. Even though you live in a four season state like Iowa, birthday meals can be eaten outside.
5. There’s no need for fancy decorations on a cake when everywhere you look, God has decorated July with flowers.
4. Fresh-picked sweet corn is on the birthday meal menu.
3. Because July is smack dab in the middle of peach season, your birthday cake can be fresh peach pie.
2. You can use the coffee house gift card at your favorite coffee shop to order not just coffee, but iced coffee…and then sit at a table outside to enjoy it.
1. Your sweetheart can ride a motorcycle to the store to purchase the most hilarious Modern Family gift bag ever in which to place the coffee house gift card he bought. Then he can hide both bag and card under his shirt to sneak it through the kitchen where you are cooking sweet corn for supper. That’s a Phil Dunphy moment if there ever was one.
by jphilo | Jul 31, 2014 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
- Many, many thanks for your kind birthday wishes. You sure know how to make someone feel like queen for a day!
- Did you know that styrofoam packing peanuts are like crack to mice? Don’t ask how I know this.
- The world feels so empty without James Garner in it. Wish the kids were here so we could honor him by laughing through our favorite James Garner flick, Support Your Local Sheriff. What’s yours?
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