Merlyn's Musings~: You may have to age, but you DON'T have to grow OLD!

People are surprised sometimes when they ask me my age and I actually tell them.

"Wow, you don't look 50...".

I tell them it's my "Immature Attitude" that keeps me young looking.

Yah, that, and slathering Oil of Olay.
"Ole!"

I have been really looking at my life, my choices and what I am willing to put up with, or wish to eliminate from my life. Thusly, I can tell you that my "high blood pressure" has been drastically reduced from 140/90 to this morning's reading of 109/74 in only TWO weeks!
What have I done to achieve this?
Well, I gave up salt and coffee mostly and am walking the dog, speaking my mind and putting up with less shite. (I guess when you swallow your anger and disappointment it raises your BP!)

Sooo....DON'T suppress or repress!
Speak your mind! Stand up for yourself!
Oh, and play. PLAY is important!

Recently, (as some of you know who follow this blog :) I added a "Story Book Club" to my monthly calendar.

I just ADORE stories! (A story! A story! A story!) and love to read them as much as tell them.

So here's a Story for you for today :)

Last night, here at my home at Squirrel Haven, I invited 9 other like-minded "adults" over to celebrate the tremendous author, illustrator and novelist Beatrix Potter.

There were bunnies involved :) And CARROT Cake and GARDEN quiche and GARDEN salad, and a soup of Beans, Ham and Carrots, and Scones with Lemon Curd and Jam, and Chocolate Bunnies and Homemade Peanut butter cookies and fun Punch, and Rye boat bread and Dill dip and Cucumber Cream Cheese Finger Sandwiches (you know how those Victorians loved their finger sandwiches... :) and of Course, Chamomile Tea...and there was Wine for "Good little Rabbits" too!

It was a lovely night of visiting and FEASTING and we read stories to each other and laughed at the humor of this author and her fine drawings and paintings. We realized what a treasure Beatrix Potter was, not only to Children's Literature, but to the Women's movement in England a 100 years ago! I mean, it "just wasn't seemly" that this "Unmarried" woman should want a career writing "Bunny Books".

Well, those "Bunny Books" are the best selling children's books of all time. Beatrix also bequeathed 4000 acres of beautiful, pristine old English farmlands and incredible countryside to the National treasure! Not bad for "a silly Bunny Book" (as some of the publishers who refused to publish her were called. I wonder if they ever regretted THAT mistake?)

At our Story Book Club, since I started it last December, we, the fun loving and child like at heart, have read and discussed:

Hansel & Gretel

Little Red Riding Hood (and all the sexual connotations there :)

The Snow Queen (mostly because we wanted to meet that month, and honored her so she would let the meeting happen and stop the blizzards that she'd been planning regularly ON Story book night...)

Baba Yaga the Witch, (it's your Mommy....She will treat you or...kill you...)

Finn McCool (the big brawny Irish man with wisdom!)

and now Peter Rabbit & his friends

Next month, in honor of Spring and Beltane (when the veil between the two dimensions is the thinnest) we will be reading and bringing all kinds of "Fairy" stories. "Fairy Tales" if you will. Good fairies, Bad Fairies, Tooth Fairies and the like!

I also found out that while I was having this extraordinary meeting with grand friends and luscious treats and reading out loud wee kids books to my friends.....that my grown daughter, Jesse (25)

had discovered that it was a very warm and wet, rainy night outside at her home.

There were 100s of toads in the road!

She and her boyfriend ran around, laughing, joyful, and energetically catching toads in the dark rainy night and put them in a jug. She caught 12 in all.