A Friend in Indeed is a Friend Indeed even when you're not in Need

To the surprise of my children, (well they are used to it now), I have friends. Right now my BFF is Dayna. Well, after my eternal BFF, of course. Anyway, she is always coming up with fun things to do. On Friday she planned a fun day for her, Barbara Ramaro (who is also my friend) and myself. We went to one of the Monterey City art galleries that I didn't even know about. It is tucked up off the main streets up a little hill in what used to be one of the old adobe, (can you say adobe) homes of the original Monterey. They have since built on to it and enlarged it but it is still cool. It is a lovely place surrounded by large trees and walled gardens with fountains and tiled walls. The galleries are the newer part built in modern times with large glass windows and high ceiling. The show we went to see was original art from children's books. I loved it and learned a lot from seeing them close up. Some of the things I learned were that they are not large. Some of them, like the art of Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit) are quiet small, most of them were almost close to the size they were in the books. The other thing I thought was so interesting was the combination of media that was used, like watercolor and oil, watercolor and colored pencil, most of them were some combination of media. They were also amazingly detailed, well most of them, some of them like the one from the Madeline book was like in the stories kind of a loose sketchlike work. All of them lovely and inspiring. We then went over to Lighthouse and found a tiny Greek restaurant that Barbara knew about, The Paprika Cafe. Of course I liked that. I had the lamb kabobs, good, rice ok, taboolie ok, the hunmas the best I have ever had, and a little sliver of baklava, very good. So we left there full and happy, drove over to a nursery in Carmel picked out some nice plants to bring home and oooed and aaahed over the beautiful flowers they had, then drove back over to cannery row to the frozen yogurt place we found when Eric and the boys were down, I'm sure only because Dayna knows how much I like frozen yogurt. We took a short cut that went from Pacific Grove to Monterey down this huge hill. I was fine at first and then the weird "Hill fear" crept in, I didn't have to close my eyes but I did have to control the scream that was creeping up my throat, "We're all going to die!!!" Instead I just announce, "I have a fear of hills" Dayna said I could close my eyes since she was driving but I chose to tuff it out.

We talked and shared and laughed and had a good time. The weather was the best. I'm teaching in Relief Society tomorrow about friendship. I'm grateful for friends, the ones that lift you up and help you feel good about yourself. Here's hoping I can be a good friend to others.

I got to have a little time at the Words before I hit Walmart and took my drive home. Missed seeing much of Sadie, she was napping but Linkin was as always good for a laugh and Chelsea is always fun to be with. So that's the tail of a day of fun for someone who is 60.