Because I don't waste enough time on the Internet already, I started a new project. I stumbled across this accidentally, checking out someone's blog in my Google reader. I saw entry titles like...
50x365 #278: Raven
50x365 #280: L.D.W.
50x365 #281: Milo
...each of which seemed to be a very short blog entry. My checking back led me to a site called *x365, started by a guy named Dan Weber, on the occasion of his turning 40, who says he wanted to "mark the occasion in some positive fashion." So he got the idea of writing 40 words a day ("no more, no less") every day for a year, each day about a person who had touched his life. It had to be someone he had met, someone whose name he remembered.
As these things do, the idea quickly "went viral" and all sorts of people took up the idea. Some followed his lead and wrote x number of words, depending on their age when they started it, some decided to write each entry in haiku, some just wrote a bit about a person, in whatever length.
It sounded like an interesting project so I decided to do it and "Bev's 65x365" was born. It's linked over there in the left hand column, at the bottom.
I decided to go with the word limit and, being 65, have made it 65 words about each person. I like the challenge of writing to a word limit. I'm also trying to make it about people that don't appear in this journal regularly. I suppose that when I start scrambling about for names to put on the list, you'll read about people like Char and Gilbert and Peggy and Ashley and all the "regulars" here, but for now, I'm plumbing the depths and thinking of people who stand out in my life, for no other reason but that I remember them, for one reason or another. I think I picked the perfect person to show the kind of person I want to start mentioning.
And you know me. I'm obsessive, so there will be an entry a day. If you're interested, just keep clicking on the link at the left when you happen to think about it. Also check out the list of the other people who are doing this. It's kind of fun to see the way they've handled the project and the sorts of people they talk about (there is a long list of participants in the right hand column of Bev's 65x365).
We all agreed that it was nice to have the leisure to just sit and chat. A note I received from Jeri D. when I got home says, "I figure we talked about 12½ hours…not many can do that."
The fun thing is that we didn't talk about anything specific. Someone says we should have kept notes so we could remember, but the fun is NOT having an agenda but just letting it all flow...and letting the silences be for awhile too.
We have all known each other nearly 50 years and our lives have intertwined during all that time. I guess the older you get the more important it is to maintain those long-term connections. It's really nice when you can say something that requires "historical memory," and not have to explain yourself, because we were all there when the incident to which you are referring took place.
We have all shared with each other the happy times (weddings and births), sad times (deaths and funerals), fun times (camping trips together) and crazy times (any time you went anywhere with Char and Mike). Three of us all wore the same wedding veil when we got married. We have all buried parents together, two of us have buried children together, one buried a spouse.
Michele wasn't part of the group for fifty years, but for about forty, and she attended the last slumber party we all had, so it was sad that she wasn't there--and we drank a toast to her memory.
Sadly, during the course of the evening one in the group had a telephone call from her daughter confirming the worst fears--the doctor says the daughter has breast cancer, so that will be a new chapter we will all be starting together, but we have all been supportive of each other for nearly fifty years and there is no reason to suspect that we won't continue to be until the last one is gone.
For me, being able to sleep all night was an added bonus. For some reason, I couldn't get to sleep the previous night until 5 a.m., so I was working on 2 hours for sleep. But I had 5 recliners and three couches from which to choose. I started out on one couch, switched to a more comfortable one, and ended up in a recliner, but I wasn't awake more than 5-10 minutes during the night and woke with the sun coming in the window, just a few minutes before Char and Pat got up. No dogs sleeping on me. Bliss.
We all left around noon. Char and I dropped Pat off at her house and stayed to pick blueberries from their garden to take home with us.
Pat - Jeri - Me - Char - Audrey
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