Phone Calls

I am not a huge fan of phone calls and the older I get the crankier I am about them.  I have rules in my head for proper phone etiquette.
 
No calls before 9 A.M. and none after 9 P.M.
Don't call me and ask who is this, you called me.  You may ask if you are speaking to Janet.
Don't call me and then put me on hold, I will hang up.
Do not call me while you are in the bathroom.
Do not call me while chewing food or gum.
If we are talking on the phone, do not also carry on a conversation with people on your end.
Telemarketers on the East Coast, figure out the time zone differences, 8:00 for you is 5:00 in the morning here.  etc., etc., etc.

I have more, but you get the idea.  Not a fan of talking on the phone.  I love email, texting, SKYPING, voicemail.  I hate calling businesses and being on hold for 45 minutes.  Yet there are times I love the phone.

I have a friend I call every month or so and we talk for over an hour.  I have not seen her in person in years.  But I love talking to her.  Family is good for long phone calls, SKYPE is better. Then there are the surprise phone calls.

This week a friend sent a text to find a time she could call me.  She no longer lives in California and I miss her.  We used to go to lunch every week.  And then she moved away.  We emailed every now and then.  We are both on Facebook, but she reads more than posting.  So we set up a time for her to call.  We talked for over two hours.  We only hung up because with the time difference, she needed to go to bed.  We caught up on each of our families, we laughed, we may have cried a little.  We picked up right where we left off years ago.  Friends can reconnect immediately, acquaintances not so much.

I miss you Donna.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away . . .

Sometime around 1968 CHEVRON transferred Gary from Florida to Northern Kentucky. (Northern Kentucky is a large region of many little towns, across the river from Cincinnati.)  Marty also worked for CHEVRON. Gary asked me to help his wife, Susan, learn the area while house hunting. Happily they bought just a couple of blocks from our home.  From that time on we became close friends.

They had a son, Doug, who was around 2 years old. I had a son the next year and then they had another son.  Our three boys grew up together.  We were transferred to the same places a couple of times.  When in different towns we would vacation together.  When apart we have used instant messaging, email and long long phone calls to stay in touch.  We are now trying to teach Gary and Susan how to SKYPE for really fun phone calls.

Anyway, we have kept up.  When Doug and Andrea married in Dallas, we went to the wedding.  I must say the most fun wedding I have ever attended.  Food, food, parties, live bands, wine, food, dancing, bubbles. When our son married in 2000 Susan, Gary, and Doug and his wife came to California for our event.  We later found out Andrea was then pregnant with triplets. 

Last night we met the triplets.  The family is in the Bay Area for spring break. (Remember the storms I told you about?  Still raining)  They invited us to dinner last night.  Doug asked us to pick a place, and we met at Tian Sing in San Francisco.  The food is as good as it looks on the web site. We had a slowly paced meal with lots of dishes to choose from.

The triplets are 11 and in the 5th grade.  They are charming, fun, and well behaved enough to let the adults catch up.  They joined in the conversation some, but mostly listened.  We had such fun talking about past happenings and finding out where we all are in our lives now.  I was pleased to find out Doug reads my blog.

Some of the stories we told are worth a blog alone. And some we ran out of time and couldn't relive. Doug and another CHEVRON kid in our hot tub and then their race to catch a plane.  The two families' trips to Disney World.  The world famous Canasta parties, grass sledding on cardboard, Doug's dog snatching cookies from Erik's hand, the famous picking pears trip.  We have had over 40 years of friendship and love between two clans.  It was great to meet the third generation.  With Facebook we are able to watch them grow up too.

NOEMI, SORRY ONE WEDDING, NOT WORTH THE EFFORT

Let's talk about friendship. Friendship, sometimes you just fall into it and it requires little work. Other times to keep it going you do all the work. Other times lots of work from both parties. And then it falls apart.

Tonight Marty and I met with an old friend. We have not spoken for 4 years. Marty and I left this friendship with a loss of trust and a lot of hurt. We never stopped loving our friend, we just didn't like what had hurt us. We missed this friend. We still loved him. Through the years he kept contact and we ignored him. About 6 weeks ago he contacted us with snail mail. This was serious. We read it and we decided what to do.

We read his thoughts. We saw a change in him and we said one more chance. Tonight we met him and we laid it out. What had hurt us, how did he feel, what did we think of that. We hugged; we drank, a lot; we cried; and we are all willing to try again.

Marty and I want this to work. We love the man. He needs us, we want to be there for him.

One day at a time. We will try again.

FRIENDSHIP

How much pain and trouble do you allow your friends to give you? How much do you forgive? How much pain and trouble do you give out?

Friendship is so very important. You need friends to make life worth living. It takes both sides for it to work. It is like a marriage, except you don't have those fights at midnight and stay up all night until things are settled. With friendship fights you worry about being as rude as the one who hurt your feelings. So you say little. Friendship errors you forgive, but it is hard to forget. If you love the person, you will work on forgetting.


Friendship is vital to life. You love your friends in spite of what happens. You hope they will love you in spite of what you do. I am so thankful that we have friends who can understand and love us for what we are.