Success

Sent to me by he who is my mentor, my friend, my sanity and my common sense....hell, let's face it, I don't have too much of those things myself sometimes! ;)


Cheers bud :)

Thankyou....

....to everyone of you for all the birthday wishes yesterday, here in comments, on facebook and on Twitter. You lot made my day! :)

It was always going to be an odd day for one reason and another, my home situation is somewhat strange and difficult, it's was my first 'occasion' since my fathers death and the ongoing dating saga wasn't causing me much in the way of joy but regardless, I had a good day and a very nice evening with a friend.

It wasn't anything like the party madness one might expect but I think I'm getting a bit beyond all that, it was however a day full of cake, chocolate and the reminder that I have some very good friends out there.

Again, I thank you guys. It may have been a strange day but ultimately I enjoyed it and the gift of friendship is the very best kind of gift!

Then and now - a happy tale

By some unexpected and circuitous route I found, by chance, a friend on Facebook in the latter part of last week, who I last saw when I was about sixteen years old!

If I'm honest I almost didn't press the 'add as friend' button assuming he wouldn't remember me, let alone want to catch up but my curiosity got the better of me and I did...still however pretty sure the request would be ignored or prompt a 'who are you' response.

No such thing!

Within minutes I got a lovely reply and immediately the reminiscing mails began to go backwards and forwards. Not only did he remember me, he remembered lots about me and the stuff we used to do when we hung out all those years ago. For those of you who have me on Facebook, that's what prompted the publication of the rather embarrassing teenage and childhood photos suddenly! (Yes, you only get the one here!)

We also it transpired, have some pretty difficult experiences in common. Despite his not living in the area any longer, two years ago he went through exactly the same illness with a parent, in exactly the same hospice, as I just have.

That was lunch time, at around 11pm we finally stopped mailing, only to continue, if at something of a slower pace, ever since!

He's an accomplished artist now, has moved away and leads a very interesting life but he's still the same guy and it has been so much fun catching up and chattering. All those years back we really just hung out in the same crowd and albeit we 'got on' we were never best buddies, now though we appear to get on like a house on fire and it's been like a small breath of fresh air in my somewhat currently mundane life!

Who would have thought Facebook could manage something so cool? Not me that was for sure!

Happy things!

If you read here regularly you might recall all the excitement when my best friend Lisa came to visit here last year from Nebraska on two occasions..... and the subsequent news of her engagement to Ian and then their prolonged dealings with U.S immigration. Finally he managed to emigrate and they got married last November.

Well yesterday I received an email from them titled 'Happy things' which included the photo below and news of the fact that yesterday they had delivered into their hands...... the long awaited green card!!

How cool and completely excellent is that? Ian is an American now!!

Congratulations guys, a very happy thing indeed.


Proof that there can be happy endings! :)

It's a small, small world!

So, I 'twitter' (@gemmak500 if you're interested, which you are probably not but I digress), in fact I twitter somewhat obsessively some might say but thus far only once have I had such the surprise I had one day last week and among all the turmoil of that particular week, this incident was one of the few happy highlights.....if not the highlight!

I have been 'twittering' for a fair few weeks to one lady in particular. I don't recall who found who originally but we got on very well from the off and daily had pretty quickly had a good dialogue going.

One evening last week she asked me where in Buckinghamshire I live, the reason being she had spent some of her childhood in the county. One question led to another and it quickly transpired that myself and my new friend were in fact old friends!

She spent her first ten or so years in the street that runs parallel to the the one in which I was bought up and now again live, we were friends and junior school and 'went round to play' at one another's home fairly often for a number of years!

How cool is that! Much reminiscing ensued needless to say!

Her family moved away and we obviously lost contact, we now live two hundred miles away from one another but I wonder what the probability of bumping into each other among the millions on twitter are??

What a small, small world it is sometimes!