I talked to G'ma today she's doing well, except one of her oldest, dearest friends passed away a few days ago. They'd be friends for 70 years.

Wow.

Yeah I'm not sure how they met, but I think maybe they helped start a church together back in Tallahassee. (I know G'ma helped start one because where they lived was too far to drive down town to the churches during the war).

My Dad and Mrs S (G'ma's friend)'s daughter are the same age, I think only 3 months apart and G'ma and Mrs S helped each other out and traded child care for errands and things like that.

They used to go to the grocery store together and they'd put the 2 babies in one pram and then Mrs S would go and do her shopping and G'ma would watch the babies and then they'd switch.

One time someone saw G'ma with the two babies and asked if they were twins and G'ma said "They are. Born only 3 months apart!"

The other story is at one point both G'ma and Mrs S decided to start doing calisthenics at home to stay in shape. I'm not sure what prompted this. But they didn't have any pants or bathing suits so they wore boxer shirts and undershirts to do the exercises. I want to say they borrowed from their husbands, but I'm not sure G'ma could that - she was nearly a foot shorter than my grandfather.

Teppy, you will be glad to hear the GF pumpkin bread came out scrumptious. I did not have to resort to the GF brownie mix I bought just in case. FTR, I couldn't find the Better Batter at Whole Foods, but they did have the King Arthur GF flour and, holy shit, it's expensive. But the pumpkin bread turned out very nice.

Excellent! Mmmm...pumpkin bread...

askye, those are great stories

smonster,

you need to take her to small claims if this stretches out.

I really need to write down the stories, G'ma had some really interesting experiences.

I still have tons of Xmas stuff to do. I've finished: 1 cowl for my brother's gf, 1 scarf for my nephew, 1 dishtowel for my dad.

I still need to finish: scarves for Mom and brother, a cowl and scarf as another person, scarf for my aunt, dishtowel and dishclothes for my dad - this is for his beach cottage. I was going to make him a scarf but I wanted to do something different.

Plus wrap the presents that I have to send out in the mail tomorrow or Tuesday depending on my schedule. Plus deposit my pay check tomorrow and order stuff from Amazon.

Neat stories, askye, and yes... write them down! I'm starting to think of a plan to get a lot of my mom's stuff down, maybe a combination of recording and writing.

A seventy year friendship is an amazing thing.

meara, I hope the water issue is no big thing and easily fixed.

you need to take her to small claims if this stretches out.

Blood from a stone. She has no $$, she volunteers at the zoo and works for pay 2 days/wk. I did tell her she could pay me over time. No response yet. She's supposed to be getting a full time job in January.

My dad's mom maintained a penpal relationship with a friend from college for over 50 years, even though they never saw each other again. My brother met her when he spent a summer outside of LA. This was her friend - [link]

My brother did some audio recordings with my grandparents a few years ago, although unfortunately my other grandmother was too far gone with Alzheimers to really contribute.

And speaking of stories, my grandfather told me a good one recently. He and an Army pal were on the way home to Georgia from California, by train. They arrived in New Orleans Christmas Eve 1944 and got to drinking. At the time, there was a curfew for military personnel in place - they couldn't order drinks after midnight - and MPs roamed the streets to "escort" service members back to their lodgings. So he and his buddy were at the Roosevelt Hotel at last call for military... and ordered twenty-five shots of whisky. He doesn't remember how they got back to where they were staying, or if they had to find another place to sleep. Unsurprisingly, they missed their train home at 9 am and had to wait all day, hungover, for another one.

Oh, New Orleans, 'twas ever thus.

Time to see if I can go back to sleep.