Dear Reader:

I didn’t even have to go look through my old books to find a copy of the Velveteen Rabbit for this title photo…I have my own “Velveteen” Rabbit! He started out as a garden Easter Rabbit, one spring long ago, until he became so worn out by the weather…(one eye is missing and one ear is doing a balancing act in the photo)…normally, it too is missing. Yet I love this little rabbit and have given him an honored place in my bedroom so he can live out his days in comfort.

As I think back over my favorite lines from the Velveteen Rabbit about being real and loved …and how the two go together…I can’t help but think of my abiding friendship with the Ya’s and this past week’s reaffirmation …reiterating just  how strong our friendship goes.

“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,”

The Ya friendship today is beyond “real”…we know everything about each other…long kept secrets, hopes, dreams, weaknesses and strengths… And we love each other more and more for all of the “real” moments we get to spend together.

We have become each others best cheerleaders for whatever “crisis” develops and unfortunately as we all age…these situations, like waves in the ocean hitting shore, seem sometimes to be a constant in our lives.

“Few things in life are more consoling than an old friendship in which all the hair (as in the story of the Velveteen Rabbit) has been rubbed off.”

That pretty much sums the retreat  up for us….but I did save an ‘Uncle Billy’ joke (Mitford series) to tell the Ya’s to cheer ourselves up and just have a good old-fashioned belly laugh! We might be getting older but we still have it more together than the three old maid sisters in Uncle Billy’s joke.

*I will have to paraphrase from memory since I returned the Mitford Series books to K.C. (who loaned them to me before I left for the beach) ….so here goes.

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There were three elderly spinster sisters who lived together in a big rambling Victorian home their father had left them. The youngest of the sisters was in her eighties, the middle sister…in her nineties…and the oldest sister, Hattie, had long passed the triple digit age line.

One day Hattie stared down (somewhat befuddled) at the floating water in her clawfoot tub. Soon after… the youngest sister and the middle sister (who were drinking their breakfast coffee on a long wooden farm table) heard her shout…

“Am I gitting in the tub or gitting out of the tub?” 

The middle sister sighed, put down her cup of coffee and told her youngest sister that she would go check on Hattie…the poor thing had no memory left at all.

The youngest sister sat back leisurely and continued to enjoy her morning coffee until she heard a cry from the middle sister….

” Sister Help! Am I going up the stairs…or going down the stairs?”

The youngest sister, sighed a deep sigh, and thanked the Lord that she still had her memory when her older sisters didn’t…she then knocked on the wooden table for a  good luck measure to ward off any memory loss.

Suddenly the middle sister stuck on the stairs and the eldest sister still staring down at the water in the tub heard their youngest sister yell:

“I’ll be right up to help y’all, you hear…as soon as I answer the door..somebody’s knocking on it.”

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So until tomorrow…It can always be worse…so smile and just enjoy the day and the moment!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Remember: To say “RABBIT” first thing this morning to bring you the “Top of the Morning” Irish Good Luck”…(and you don’t even have to be Irish.) Since my bedraggled but  beloved garden (Velveteen) rabbit has on a green ribbon..I think he can teach us about love and luck for this upcoming month.

Next month I can put Easter eggs around him…Easter sure is late this year, isn’t it?

*Today I am heading back to the Comprehensive Wound Center and I am just betting that “the wound” will be really improved..how could it not with so much love around! This afternoon, when I return, I will gather all the pictures and funnies from the past week to share with you tomorrow!

….But I can tell you the weather was the best yet…in the mid to high sixties and low seventies…cloudy but with bright spurts of sunshine with blue skies intermingled. We kept the tradition and returned to the Chive Blossom for another fabulous meal Tuesday evening. Life is good!

*Eva Cate won ‘The Craziest Hat and Socks”  ( they wear uniforms at her school) Recognition for Dr. Seuss Day at her school (Read Across America) Way to go Eva Cate…way to go Mandy!

(Pink bow from the Race for the Cure and then the girls painted a paper mache elephant I used in a Christmas Eve story a few years back)