Welcome to the Forever Juicy Club

In every little town and city, you can find chapters of Old Ladies' Clubs.  It's easy to join , no membership fees.  You just have to give in to being OLD (yuck!) and be fluent in negativity about it. (Of course, I don't know any members personally, but sometimes I overhear them at the next table talking.)

I'm proposing a resistance.  Let's call it the Forever Juicy Club and everyone I know and love is invited to join.

I was inspired this week by a lunch conversation with Chris, and a long phone conversation with Nellie. We are all (as are all my friends) intent on avoiding the Old Ladies' Club--which includes daily doses of "ain't it awful" cartoons in your inbox.

Chris who's seven years younger has also decided not to join the Widows' Club.  She misses Ron very much, and she's devoted to continuing the life they built together by being joyful, traveling, writing, horseback riding, making jewelry, and dancing.  She inspires me so much!  We met at a StoryCircle conference years ago and she's also a member of a Story Circle group in Kerrville.

Nellie and Arthur just returned from a Smithsonian tour of to Scotland and England and are going next week to the John C. Campbell Folk Art School. She'll be taking a class in Crankie-making and Arthur is taking one in woodworking.  She recently flew to New York to take a class from the cartoonist/writer, Lynda Barry.

I liked this video she sent me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YnT5dopGI

Pam and I met for dinner tonight at the newly-remodeled Sorrento's on Broadway and the food and the conversation were delicious as we talked about books and You Tube classes we're both watching.  We talked about Words in Pain--the wonderful book she gave me.  "When you share a book you love with someone you love, you're telling them more about who you are," she said.

We have to choose to be invigorated by life and to live it to the fullest or the Old Ladies' Club will start sending us invitations to join their ranks, so we're all going to have to pledge not to get "old" in spite of chronology.   You can be an avid reader, an actor, a writer, an artist.  You can be a swimmer or yogi or walker. A photographer, painter or cartoon maker. You can crochet, build gardens or decorate houses.  It really doesn't matter what you choose as long as it's something that engages your imagination and curiosity and fires your passion for living, observing and moving.