Tag Archives: friends

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A Covid Christmas, seven months later.

August 10, 2021 Rivergirl 23 Comments

Now that the stage is set (see yesterday’s post) let’s check out the guests and festivities.

Santa made numerous appearances.

And I shared another version of my mankini Santa with this young man who was brave enough to wear it.

Wine flowed freely.

Though some guests didn’t approve of our edible flower embellishments.

This young lady landed herself a new beau. Pre Med and good looking… her father approves. 👍

Drinks were consumed on the deck, and goat entertainment was enjoyed.

Eventually the party moved to the pool area.

And food was enjoyed among Christmas trees and lobster pool floaties.

Extra food was turned into art.

(Art being in the eye of the beholder and better appreciated when you’ve been drinking all afternoon.)

To be continued…

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Let me give you the lay of the land….

August 9, 2021 Rivergirl 35 Comments

We drove a little over an hour west to reach our friend’s house for the Christmas in July party I mentioned last week. And when we left our town, the weather was not cooperating.

Thankfully it was drier in her neck of the woods and let me tell you, the property she recently purchased definitely qualifies as out of the way.

After a long ride on a bumpy dirt road, her place came into view.

As you can see, her main reason for buying this place was ample room for horses.

The house is a bit odd. It looks large, but isn’t…. with a surprisingly small kitchen and bedrooms.

Numerous outbuildings are scattered around, as are decks and staircases.

One of which….

Lead to goats. Boots, Buckles and Gypsy to be precise.

Did I mention there’s a pool?

To be continued…

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Christmas in July?

July 30, 2021 Rivergirl 23 Comments

Some years, if we’re not traveling… we spend Christmas Day with friends. They tend to have less emotional baggage than family, and are generally a lot more fun. Of course last year, Covid ruined everything about the holidays and we neither traveled nor made merry with friends. Boo to global pandemics! They’re such a buzz kill.

Our friends, being fun loving (as well as gift greedy) have decided to celebrate 2020’s lost holiday in July. (It will be a barbecue/pool party at our friend’s newly purchased house/horse farm/how the Hell is a 50 something single woman going to take care of this huge spread by herself.)

We’ve been invited and encouraged to get into the Christmas in July spirit…. so naturally I will be wearing this:

Because nothing says Ho! Ho! Ho! like Santa in a mankini.

I will also be bringing this:

A Covid themed piñata, so we can all take our frustrations over the past year out on something other than our spouses.

Yes. To all of that. And I won’t be filling it with candy, no. In honor of the shit show that was 2020 I will fill it with these:

What are those you ask? Only the perfect gift to give your friends in case certain items become hard to find again.

Portable toilet paper! Am I a genius or what?

And to further get into the Christmas spirit? I’ve purchased this 2020 totally went down the drain themed tree.

I did not however purchase the accompanying ornaments.

Tree turd danglers?

No.

Definitely, no.

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A good old fashioned shopping trip.

June 6, 2021 Rivergirl 21 Comments

Being fully vaccinated, I’m starting to feel safer venturing out with a friend for some long over due retail therapy. First stop? A nursery.

Because as I’ve said previously, you can never have too many flowers.

Second stop? Goodwill… where I saw this.

Although I had no idea what it was. At first I thought it was a cat with big tatas wearing a cape and waving. Then I figured out it was a cape wearing kangaroo with boxing gloves and an open pouch. The question is… why does such a thing exist?

We visited a gift store with strange mossy things…

But I did like the upside down air plant stuck inside a dried urchin.

And if you ever want a suede comforter with barbed wire?

Complete with turquoise stars and fringed pillow shams? I can totally hook you up. ( Although I won’t be spending the night in your guest room. Uh uh. Nope. )

I had to laugh at the rainbow coalition of Crocs.

Does anyone even wear those monstrosities anymore?

And finally, this was the one that got away. I’m filled with regret for not scooping that little gem up when I saw it. Ice cubes in 8 minutes? I totally should have bought that for our man cave bar.

😩

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Twisted, but I have to.

June 5, 2021 Rivergirl 25 Comments

My husband has a childhood friend named Dick. As you can imagine, going through life with that name requires a sense of humor. He has one, and figures if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So when I run across Dick jokes? I have to share. The following requires using the predictive text on your phone and some of the answers were a hoot.

Here’s mine:

Truer words were never spoken.

Is it wrong I find these amusing?

Or saluted. Tough call.

And here I thought Dicks didn’t take time off.

That’s one way to look at it. Or them…

The way people are these days? I’m not sure that will work.

A manufactured product. Does that mean Wal Mart has them on sale?

Poor Dick, apparently not everyone is a fan.

Heck, we’ve all been there.

Funny side note? I blogged this from my phone and every time I typed Dick… it was changed to Duck. Every. Single. Time.

🤣

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When everything that can go wrong…. does.

May 24, 2021 Rivergirl 60 Comments

We got a phone call telling us the leather chairs we’d ordered for the man cave were ready for pickup. Erring on the side of caution, I suggested we take the husband’s old truck in for a check up before making the long trip. In typical man fashion he thought this was a ridiculous idea, got aggravated with me for impugning the integrity of his baby and told me to schedule the furniture pick up for Friday.

You knew where this was going…. right? The truck started sputtering and jerking when we hit I-95, an hour after we left home. I suggested we turn around and go back, but no. The husband had the bright idea to get off the highway and ride the back roads down to New Hampshire. This added at least 2 hours to our 2 1/2 trip. When we finally limped in to Nashua… which has awful stop and go traffic and endless traffic lights on the main drag… the truck was stalling every time it idled. I suggested we pull off the road, but no. The husband could literally see the warehouse where our chairs were patiently waiting. He didn’t pull over… so at the final red light? The truck died. Totally and completely died. Smoke pouring out from under the doors died. Yours truly had to jump out and help the husband push it off the busy road into a parking lot. With my bad knee. In case you were wondering…. pushing an 8 foot bed pickup is not on the approved radial meniscus tear exercise list. Ouch! We called AAA and were told due to a tow truck driver shortage it would be a 3 hour wait. Ever sit in a hot truck for 3 hours waiting on a tow? I don’t recommend it. At 4:30 that afternoon…

The tow truck came, loaded our vehicle on the flat bed and promptly told us due to Covid restrictions we couldn’t ride back to Maine with him … and oh yeah, our coverage was only good for 100 miles. So they’d have to charge us $5 per mile for the overage.

😳

We paid, the truck went back to Maine…. and there was really only one thing left for us to do.

I drank. I fumed. I ate southwestern egg rolls. I drank some more.

There may have been eye rolling. (Who am I kidding, there was definitely eye rolling. )

And then I called a friend. A good friend who jumped in his brand new truck and drove over 2 hours to pick us… and our leather chairs … up. Good thing the warehouse was open until 8:00pm.

We took him out for dinner and drinks. We filled his giant gas tank. I slipped $100 bill in his center console.

We arrived home after midnight.

Not the best time to move furniture, but when do we ever do anything the easy way?

Did I mention the barn door (the free door my husband got at the dump) is a non standard size? The chairs got stuck 4 times. There may have been cursing, but at that point I was too tired to care.

We rolled in to bed about 1:30am…. and I thought the bad luck was over.

I was wrong.

To be continued….

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My hat’s off to them.

May 16, 2021 Rivergirl 16 Comments

A friend of ours crossed something off her bucket list recently…. and while I was happy she was fulfilling a lifelong dream, I did make one small request.

Take pictures of the hats!

Because when you go to the Kentucky Derby? There are lots of fabulous hats. Sadly my friend had a few too many mint juleps and only shared three hat photos. (Bad friend. Bad!)

But at least the last one was a doozy.

Pardon me while I snicker and include an anti-Brady Derby pic as well.

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Random cat nonsense.

May 11, 2021 Rivergirl 18 Comments

I posted a picture of Lord Dudley Mountcatten sprawled on my husband’s laptop to Facebook a while back and a girlfriend sent me this.

I think that could work quite well.

Required picture of his Lordship.

Hard no.

If there is ever a club that declines to offer me membership? Please let it be this one.

Required photo number two.

And look how happy kitty is with his gift! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a strategically placed pile of poo in that owner’s future.

Required photo number three. Dudley is not impressed.

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I’m going out on a limb here….

April 6, 2021 Rivergirl 39 Comments

I’ve been meaning to share this with you for a while now… ever since Swinged Cat asked me about it in the comments of this blog.

“It” being strange and/or supernatural events. If that’s not your thing, no problem…. feel free to skip the next few posts. It wasn’t my thing either. Until it happened to me. Not so easy to ignore then.

As most of you know I lost my father when I was 14. I was an only child of older parents and a total daddy’s girl.

His loss shook my world to it’s core. Heck, I’m 57 years old, and to be honest I still haven’t gotten over it. Anyway…. back in 2013 my best friend gave me a very odd Christmas gift. “An Evening with Spirits” which was an hour long private session with a psychic. Now before you roll your eyes (like I did) it should be noted this was her daughter’s old college roommate and not some loon on the street corner. She’s traveled the world, studied numerous religions and spiritual disciplines, worked with the most respected people in the field ( you’re rolling your eyes again, I know… because I did it as well). But I assure you, my girlfriend is the most down to earth, no nonsense, grounded New Englander you’re apt to meet so if she said this woman was the real deal and forked out a major amount of money for a reading? I had to go along.

The following is copied from my old blog site, and while I normally don’t do that type of thing…. it was written right after the experience and was a harbinger of things to come. Read on if you’re interested.

A Twilight Zone moment….. For Friends Only

Added: Saturday, January 26th 2013 at 6:38am by rivergirl

Friends only because I really don’t need a larger crowd of people thinking I’m crazy.

As you know, I’m using my unique Christmas present this weekend and will be visiting the psychic I posted about earlier. Me, seeing a psychic. And they say pigs don’t fly.

So yesterday I’m sitting on the couch reading an interesting book about Tibet. It was full of legend and lore and spirits and demons…..which got me thinking about my upcoming reading. Basically I was wondering if it would be amazing or a total waste of time. Contact with my late father would be a dream, but we all know how rarely those come true. Flooded with bittersweet memories of my father, I put the book down and looked up at our mantle where an antique English clock of my father’s sits.

It’s a pretty little thing that my mother gave us 29 years ago when my husband and I moved into our first home.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Hasn’t for the entire 29 years we’ve owned it and since it has a rather special pedigree….

I never wanted to take it to just any repair shop to be fixed. Call me lazy, call me cheap… but there you have it…. it doesn’t work.

Until yesterday when I was sitting on the couch thinking about my father and the damn thing started ticking.

I’m not kidding…. I almost had a heart attack.

My jaw dropped, and I think I started shaking.

I jumped up to make sure I wasn’t hearing things and I swear by all that’s holy the stupid thing was working. After more than 29 years.

WTH!

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Crazy lady hearing things? I’d be the first to say so if it hadn’t happened to me. The clock ticked for almost half an hour, and naturally stopped right before my husband got home from work.

Other people talk about experiencing weird things like this and I scoff. But I’m here to tell you when it happens to you? All bets are off.

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The (not so) free pool table finally sees some use.

March 26, 2021 Rivergirl 30 Comments

So the free pool table… the one that has cost us approximately $14,000 ( and counting ) in storage barn to man cave renovations… actually saw some action last weekend.

Two of the husband’s coworkers came by for the afternoon (no worries, all 3 men are fully vaccinated) for Cajun gumbo, beer and pool. I don’t play, so I know my other half was happy. And me? I was happy because I received another bar christening gift.