We were never cheerleaders or members of the popular crowd in school. We've gotten into as many outrageous predicaments as Ethel and Lucy. We had special voices for our dogs, Nickles and Fern, that only we could understand. We had secret hideaways in the woods. We had funerals for our salamanders. We sat in front of Bobby Kennedy's children at the Turtles and Every Mother's Sons' concert at Expo '66 (?) in Montreal. We went into a swanky Parisian restaurant and realized we didn't have enough money to buy anything but appertizers. We got my father's relatively new station wagon stuck on the side of a mountain in rattlesnake country not far from Boone and had to walk three miles to the nearest house to call home, confess to our mishap, and wait for the tow truck and my very disgruntled mother to come to our rescue. We forgot all about our music lessons one Saturday morning because we were jumping in the autumn leaves, so we set our watches back an hour to pretend we arrived on time, thinking for sure our teacher would believe us. We had beauty pageants in which we were extremely voluptuous contestants with really hilarious talents. We spent almost every weekend together, watching scary movies and crawling under the covers to scream. Our names are still written in chalk on the cement blocks in my grandmother's basement where we played hopscotch with my cousins. We played in the high school band together, but neither of us made the chorus. When we traveled to Mexico together in the summer of 1976, we did everything from eat tripe soup to down too many shots of tequila, resulting in two broken ribs for P. and one hellacious case of amoebic dysentery for T.
We've known each other since birth. I am a year and three months older than P., and our moms were with each other when we were born. Our mothers worked together in the infirmary at Appalachian State University, knitted all our sweaters together, traveled to meetings together, and were the best of friends. P and I attended the same schools, had many of the same teachers, and spent a sizeable portion of our childhood together. We went to the same church and got kicked out of Sunday school for not paying attention to Mrs. Kay Wilson's morning lesson. (It was incredibly boring, and as I recall, we were making silly comments aout her flowered hat that was attracting bees when she asked us to leave!)
We have always been and will always be the very best of friends. And yes, as is readily observable, neither of us have ever won a Miss Photogenic award, except in our own beauty pageants! (The following is a classic P & T photo...Notice how we both have our eyes closed in this picture, something we've always been able to execute perfectly in front of the camera lens.)
So here we are...P (Peggy) and T (Tanya)....together for a brief visit at The Farm yesterday as P. and her amazing and beautiful daughter, Alex, stopped in to spend the night on their return trip to Regina, Sasketchewan. I'm sure Alex learned a heck of a lot about her mom as we entertained her with accounts of our lives.
Oh how we laughed, reminisced, and laughed some more!! It's been about 10 years since we last saw each other, but something tells me we'll be together more and more as we get older Who knows what we'll get into in our golden years?????...Watch out world, here we come!!!
to the sink ...
to the glass! 
In celebration of my successful pruning efforts last spring and in honor of the beautiful grapes that just couldn't go to waste, I spent the late afternoon and early evening making grape juice the old fashioned way. I cooked the grapes, smashed them up, and ran the "mash" through cheese cloth to extract the juice. 
Mr. Gonk, a self-confessed worrier, nervous sort, and coffee addict, brings a rather frenzied balance to the happy-go-lucky Ms. PH and unfailingly mellow Ms. Gnome. Reputed to lovingly but constantly badger his girlfriends into action, he also knows when it's time "to throw in the towel" when dealing with the unconventional political duo.
