Remember to Make Memories

This has been a busy as heck week for me. My first challenge iss that I hold a Texas real estate license. I don't use it any more professionally, but it's a good thing to keep for friends and family - especially when my daughter bought and sold her house, mama's license saved them lots of money on both deals! But we have to do continuing education every two years- 18 hours worth. Guess who realized this week that my license expired on Thursday?? Yep - me! So for three days all I did was the online classes, no writing, no housework, no laundry, nada but, I made the deadline! 

My joy at my successful efforts was quickly diminished by the sad news of the passing of a long time neighbor, Carol. A wonderfully sweet woman who was ever so kind to all the neighbors. Her granddaughter and my daughter played together often, for years, so my neighbor has a sweet place in all our hearts. She and I organized an estate sale for my next door neighbor probably twenty years ago - I've had three neighbors since Camille moved away, but Carol was a dependable constant in our lives. She rightly convinced me not to stain my wooden fence but to paint it - she said it would make my yard look softer, and it did. A landscape architect by trade, she kept the entrance to our neighborhood beautiful and had a gorgeous backyard that any park would be jealous of.  While I have a nice sized lot for a major city, across the street along the creek, the lots are gigantic. Carol's was a show piece she and her husband happily shared with all the neighborhood kids for decades. Just about anyone who grew up on our street had their prom, homecoming, and sometimes engagement photos taken in their yard. I've posted a snippet of the yard on YouTube that I took at the family home after the funeral.  Carol was so talented. And not just with flowers. Her skill for decorating was just as strong. For my daughter's wedding when we had about 100 people over the night before for a party, Carol helped move everything around to accommodate all those folks and still made it look nice! 

Listening to all the friends and family share stories of Carol reminded me how important it is to make memories. Long after any of us are gone, our kids and grandkids, or friends and their kids, will tell stories about us. If we're blessed, they'll make people smile. But we have to make an effort to do so even when we don't feel like going to the family gathering, or friend's party, or dinner, or whatever.  And you never know what a small kindness can mean to another person, or the blessings that will come back to you because of it. Carol was always kind, and always kept her eyes to the lord. She will be greatly missed. 

On a more business note - because November is bell pepper month (who knew! LOL) a group of authors decided it would be fun to celebrate with a month-long Pepper Romance Event.  You can find all the books here:  https://subscribepage.io/bellpepper

Today I take my friend to her cataract surgeon for her one week post op - on day one her vision was 20/25 and she was amazed, the next day it went blurry and she'd digressed to 20/50 - which is way better than what it was with cataracts, but a bit disappointing. Today we'll find out where her vision settled. The moral of the story- if you have cataracts, don't wait till they're the worst the doctor has ever seen to get them taken care of! 

The other bright side of the week - hubby has been having trouble at work ever since a computer crashed last month and he's been trying to make due with his laptop - it couldn't sync with the printer and then the back up was giving him grief - so Sunday we finally made time in the afternoon to buy a new desktop and then we bumbled our way through transferring backed up files and recreating files and hallelujah, it worked! 

To thank you for being so patient with me - I thought I'd share a very little snippet from the new book in the new series - the hero and heroine are talking - this is one of those little things in books that actually is based on real life: 

      They discovered they both adored having Mr. Wheeler for history and could have done with anyone but Mrs. Mahoney for biology.
     “I’ll never forget the day I walked into her office to buy the tickets for the school play.” Preston chuckled. “I was a freshman and had no clue who this woman was, other than one of the biology teachers. I did as I had been taught, smiled charmingly at her and asked for two tickets. When she stared at me a moment and then said, “you’re a freshman aren’t you?” I wondered if she was psychic or if someone had pinned a 'kick me' I’m a freshman note somewhere that I hadn’t noticed.”
     “Did you? Have a note on you?”
     He shook his head. “Nope. I asked her, “Do I look that clueless?” Then she frowned and replied, “No, you’re smiling at me.”
     Sarah couldn’t hold back the burst of laughter that erupted. “Oh, I can so picture Mrs. Mahoney saying that. She really did have a mean streak.”
     “I considered that perhaps it was just my perspective as a student and I’d understand better once I grew up.”
     “Did you?”
     “Nope. After a decade I concluded she was just plain mean.” 
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On that note, I shall bid y'all a fond farewell till next week!