I am quite sure that all of us, over the years, have heard many times that one of the best pick-me-up medicines as we face each and every day is to laugh a lot, at each other, with each other, and at every opportunity.. They also claim that smiling and a real good and happy yawn is one of the best exercises for our faces, but that frowns can become quite painful, and one of our best god-given blessings to share with everyone is a good joke and a great sense of humour.
Although there are a few people who suggest that I shouldn’t take holidays, let me remind everyone that my wife and I are both in retirement mode, and we try to sneak away whenever we wish. Last week, we took the short hop over the Rocky Mountains and totally enjoyed a few days of R and R, lots of walking, picnic lunches and ice cream in the sun, and loads of laughs in and around Parksville on Vancouver Island. We really enjoyed going back to all the neat spots where we used to take the kids many years ago, including the market at Coombs, where the goats live on the grass roof and the magnificent Cathedral forest where the oldest of the giant Cedar trees has risen there for over 800 years and now towers over 250 feet tall and is 29 feet in circumference. There are also miles of sandy beaches in the area, and the great miracle of nature is that when the tide goes out every morning it recedes up to a mile, leaving lots of sand on which young and old can walk and run, build sand castles, and find lots of the living and left-over treasures of the sea. When you get tired you can sit down on one of the many benches or in the soft sand and watch over 50 teams of excited teens playing three on three beach volleyball, as well as many other sports for all ages.
Parksville, B.C. is certainly a ‘retirement haven’ for seniors, who walk, run and tear around in their neat scooters with the built in umbrellas each and every day, with most having a dog tagging along, and the dress code being mildly wild and certainly not old fashioned. In between our many hilarious and totally loosey-goosey games of mini-golf at two of the best 18 hole fun-courses in the world, we saw lots of great old antique cars, trucks and motorcycles, and found out too late that at Qualicum Beach they host an annual Father’s Day Show and Shine that this time around hosted over 500 old but dazzling entries. It was great fun, but it is always nice to come back home really rejuvenated and ready to soar into the summer in an easy going senior mode with family and friends.
A few short chuckles:
*The best diet of all is the Bachelor’s Diet. You only eat half of everything you cook because the other half is stuck to the bottom of the pan.
*The ‘vanishing Canadian’ is the one who pays cash for everything they buy. I am really slow typing on my computer, but I somehow succeed by using the ‘biblical system’……seek and ye shall find.
*A man we know solved the problem of too many visiting relatives; He borrowed money from the rich ones and loaned it to the poor ones, and now none of them come back.
As I hop along through my 70s, I find that I have mellowed quite a bit, I laugh a whole lot more, and I don’t have to try and make everyone happy, because no matter how hard we try there will always be a few out there who will never respect or appreciate the good intentions of others. Once you have recovered at the end of this week from the grand celebrations of the 80th Ponoka Stampede, you can get on with the rest of your exciting summer, but why not start it off right now by having a great week, all of you.