Seven separate thoughts on the 7th...

1) As I blog hop, I find that a lot of bloggers have days set aside for a paticular kind of posting. I have avoided doing that, because it seemed a little too crowd follower-ish. And I hate to follow the crowd. Truly.

2) We had a lovely salad for dinner tonight. A few days ago, I broke down and purchased a pomegranate. It has been such a fad fruit lately. Aaack! I've followed a crowd. But I had to. I just had to see it, smell it, taste it, feel it for myself. Because here's the crazy thing...the house that I grew up in had a pomegranate bush/tree, and I've never tasted them. We also had tangerines and oranges and figs. And we ate the tangerines and oranges and figs. But we never ate the pomegranates. I seem to remember being told they weren't good to eat...no fruit...nothin' but seeds. That absolutely makes me laugh now. My purchased pomegranate was a wonderful addition to our salad tonight. And if I only had known that the seeds were the good part, I could have enjoyed pomegranates for my entire life. If my mother had only known, I'm sure she would have found a way to make pomegranate jam or something...because those oranges of ours were sour enough to pucker a pig, but she just used them like lemons for lemon meringue pie. She used everything. Except pomegranates.

3) My family bought a house before I was born. It truly was the only home I ever knew. What a blessing...almost unheard of these days. We didn't sell it till after my parents died.

4) I had a terrible time typing 'my parents died' just now. I tried 'passed' and 'passed away' and 'left this world.' I finally settled on the brutally honest 'died,' but it stung my eyes and lumped my throat. For crying out loud (no really, for crying out loud) it's been over ten years for my mom, and almost twenty for my dad. Maybe it's because yesterday was my dad's birthday.

5) I was listening to NPR today, and I heard just a portion of a program...but what a portion. The guests were a woman with severe physical challenges and a friend of hers. The friend said that one day he was telling his friend, this woman, that he had looked at himself in the mirror and saw a stranger, an old stranger...how had the years passed without him knowing...yada, yada, yada. And his memory of her response had stuck with him ever since. She told him that life was like a book. And if you were in the middle of the book, would you really want to go back to page 16? Of course not. You keep reading to see what's going to happen! You want to see how the plot is going to play out.

It got me to thinking about how I read books. And sometimes, when I'm in an especially good book, I hit about the three-quarter mark, and I make myself slow down, because I want to savor it and make it last as long as possible and enjoy all the good stuff. And that made me think about how we slow down as we get older. Maybe it's part of the grand scheme of things. If we are lucky enough to reach an old age, perhaps we should be quite happy to slow down a bit and just...savor...for as long as possible...and enjoy all the good stuff.

6) That last thought brewed in my head all day, and I knew I would have to blog about it. But then when I logged on, I saw that Becky had a new post that looked interesting. So I went to her blog, and oh my goodness, I saw something that I HAD to get someone for Christmas. And so it has begun in earnest...the Christmas crafting AND the Christmas shopping. Sorry...can't link...someone might click in lieu of shaking the package. So thank you, Becky, for the gift idea...even though I spent a lot of time on that website instead of writing a really profound post about thought #5.

7) I also have been pondering Caroline's recent post query asking if there is a way to find blogs that are local to your area. When I read that question, I went to google and put in "my city, state blogs" (only I used my actual city and state) and I did find a few. It gave me a kind of creepy feeling. I kind of LIKE the anonymity of blogging, and I'm not sure how I feel about my local acquaintances reading what I write. I don't know why. I know my daughter and my nieces read my blog, and that doesn't bother me. But I don't tell many other friends or family members.

Also, it kind of made me feel funny, because being a blogger is sort of following a trend...I mean, c'mon, everybody and her bff has a blog these days. And as I said in thought #1, I don't really like to follow the crowd. For instance, I used to collect Noah's Arks. I mean...like...since I was really young. Then Noah's Ark got to be a big fad, and I packed all of mine away. I couldn't handle following a trend.

So I've kind of been wondering if I wanted to keep blogging. But then I figured, what the hell, I like blogging. So I figured I might as well go all out, and set aside a day for a particular kind of post too.

So I'll do this again on the 7th of next month. :)