I am NOT 60!

Well not yet anyway! Last week I developed what Dave Barry calls the "Martian Death flu." Now I have seen lesser people develop this and immediately become total wimps! But I pride myself on my kickbutt immune system (more powerful than MRSA, able to leap gram negative bacteria in a single bound--it's a vitamin, it's a vaccine, it's SUPERJULIE!) and also I am NOT a complainer (shut up Laura! Get back in your closet or I won't let you out until summer!) not to mention, I am the soul of stoicism. So you can see, when a person like me takes to her bed, with fever, aches pains and coughs, it is very serious. I was unable to pick up a telephone to call anyone, but I kept getting concerned phone calls from family and friends. "That's nice," I would think, and immediately fall asleep again. Finally on Friday evening, daughter Kris called. "Mom, you're really messing me up by being sick you know! We're having a surprise birthday party for you tomorrow, and a lot of people are coming from far away, and I don't even know how to cancel it now. I didn't know if I should not tell you & hope you start feeling better by tomorrow, or tell you and spoil the surprise! I feel so guilty."
So, I had to get better. And I did. Sort of.
Saturday evening I drove over to Kris and Michaels, and walked in the door.
"SURPRISE!" everyone yelled.
"Sort of," son Steve added.
It was, of course, very fun, and I did feel lots better. They made me a scrapbook--which I can show off at work. Lots of funny cards and other gifts. Greg made me a DVD with greetings and well wishes from almost everyone (Rosie, you are still in trouble with Greg for missing your "cameo.") I would love to post some clips from it on this blog if I could figure out how. They are so funny!
But you know, I'm really not 60 yet.

Pre-electronic communications

Actual letter writing is hard. Even before email, I used to type letters just because I could say more. But even if I got a letter typed, I then had to find an envelope without grease marks on it, and a stamp. If it was cold out, I would try to talk someone else into taking it to the mailbox. And then it took forever to get there, and who knew if you would ever hear back? Since I've always loved new technology, I used to send letter tapes to my sisters and nieces and nephew--back in the old days before cell phones. Long distance calling was pretty spendy, especially when I was being an at home mom (read--NO extras at all). I still have a lot of those tapes--and the funny thing is, I wish I would have shut up more, because now what is very fun to listen to is the kids in the background. One interesting tape is from Martie. Thinking Amber was taking a nap, she had grabbed a handful of frozen chocolate chips to munch on while she was taping a letter to me, and very soon after that Amber wandered into the room. Martie covered up the chocolate chips and kept talking, but Amber just kept circling around, "almost like she was sniffing!" Martie laughed, "It's almost like she has a radar for chocolate!"
Sometimes the kids made tapes too, and they are still great! Although they tend to have long pauses while they wandered off, or had fights over who was going to tape next, punctuated by earsplitting scraping noises as they picked up the tape player and plunked it down again. It would be neat to figure out how to get tapes onto CDs. I'd love to have the one Tom and Val made for Kris when she and Michael were living in England. It's probably somewhere around, unlabeled.