Scrabble Anyone?-A Sunday Favorite

Chari over at Happy to Design is hosting Sunday Favorites, designed to let us repost a favorite post. Thanks Chari! Click here to check out other bloggers Sunday Favorites.

I have been playing a lot of Scrabble on Facebook this year. It's been a great way to stay connected to family and friends. At home I play with my grandsons.




In '08 I was reconnected with a dear friend from my youth. I think she found me on Reunion.com, but I had already been thinking about her and wondering where she had gone. Synchronicity is a strange thing. It really reinforces my belief that we are all already connected at a level that is both surprising and mysterious.

At any rate, I'm so happy she found me. She inspired me to play Scrabble again. I had always loved the game as a kid, but I am rediscovering a passion from my childhood that has become contagious in my adult life. It seems like almost my entire extended family loves Scrabble too. Let's face it, is there anybody out there that doesn't enjoy a game of Scrabble?

While out-of-town family were here for Christmas, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law got my mother-in-law set up on Facebook, and now we are connecting on Facebook via Scrabble. It's really been so much fun. I'm all about having fun these days.

I have been home sick this week with a cold, and the height of my day is to check Facebook and see that it's my turn to play. I have about six games going all the time.

I am learning to embrace pleasure in what ever form it arrives. Right now that would be a game of Scrabble.

A Trip to Beverly Hills - Sunday Favorites

It's time for Sunday Favorites once again. It's a chance to repost our favorite posts over at Chari's Happy to Design. Visit Chari for more Sunday Favorites.

Shown above is the first apartment I lived in with my mother and sister, after moving to Beverly Hills. Behind the window on the left is the living room of the apartment we lived in.

Yesterday I took a trip to Beverly Hills to visit my friend Sybil's mother, Dr. Elfrieda Sever. You see her in the picture above, on the right, with my mother on the left. Elfrieda (I called her Dr. Sever when I was growing up) and Sybil, her only daughter, spent many a Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrating with us.

Sybil and I met when we were just 15 years old. We lived on Young Drive and Sybil and her mother lived on Durant. We met in cooking class. Sybil was new to Beverly Hills, moving from San Francisco. As we all know, moving away from friends and all that is familiar when you are fifteen is no easy transition. I liked Sybil right away, but she had an instant distrust for me, thinking I was much too sweet to be for real. Ah well... she knows the truth now. I really have always thought of Sybil like a sister and I believe she thinks of me that way too.

Our mothers were both from Germany and both single. My mother had worked in San Francisco when she first worked for Elizabeth Arden. They had a lot in common. We introduced them and they became quick friends. They spoke German to each other and so much of the information I was anxious to hear about their adult lives was hidden from me. So, they both remained mysterious and glamorous, with their blonde hair and their distinctly European ways.

It's truly wonderful to still have friends that know my history and share my story.

Sybil lives in London now, and has her very own glamorous life, but her mother still lives in Beverly Hills and is so far away from the daughter she holds so dear. After losing my own mother in May of 2007, I have a new appreciation for my friend Sybil's mother. Most of my mother's friends are gone now, so it was especially meaningful for me to share a little holiday cheer with Elfrieda.

When I first arrived, Elfrieda was just at the end of having a lovely massage, by a masseuse that Sybil hired, to make sure her mother was properly pampered. She told me the masseuse comes once a week. What a luxury! My mother would have definitely approved.

Elfrieda took great pride in showing me the latest, beautiful, hand embroidered tablecloth she was working on. She showed off her beautiful orchids and told me she couldn't live without flowers. She had me look at the beautiful bougainvillea and wonderful Meyer lemon tree she was growing in pots on the balcony. Her lemon tree had twenty lemons ready to pick. I was so glad, because I wanted to bring her lemons off my tree, knowing she loves lemons, but they weren't quite ready to pick. We had tea and strawberry cake together and then she became a little tired. She had, after all, just had a relaxing massage.