40 Years Ago Today.....

by Sunspot 22 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Sunspot

  THANK YOU for the warm congrats AND the very sweet invitations!

  We ended up going down to the Fingerlakes area (the weather was absolutely PERFECT) taking back roads and seeing the scenery, and we went to a big mall down there. There was this gigundo fresh-water aquarium and they fed the fish "little fish" at noon.....what a ZOO that was watching the chase that went on! The little hid and the big ones went looking for them.....it was quite a sight!

  Hubby bought me a gorgeous soft and fluffy sweater in my favorite color combination (I had been eye-balling it) but I had JUST drained our bank account getting new eyeglasses a few days ago. Medicare does not cover eyeglasses and mine REALLY needed replacing. It came at a bad time....but then doesn't everything?

  He then handed me $$$ to "go and play" in a Craft store while he went to have a cigarette and a cuppa. WoW! I was quite overwhelmed! I had come IN the rear door from the parking lot right after we had come back from getting lunch....this store was HUGE (not like we have around HERE!) and I was having a bit of a problem FINDING anything. I finally found something I had been wanting for months that we don't HAVE in our local stores....and I also found a few novely items that we don't have here either. I went to "check out" and could NOT find the checkout counter.

  I went up and down several times with no success! I cornered another customer and asked---she said it was in the front.....I went hunting again....the display shelves were quite tall and I am quite short....and the way the aisles are set up, the go in all sorts of angles...NOT your usual grid pattern....(sigh)....so there I was. Stumped. Asked another woman that worked there....she pointed to in the opposite direction....by THIS time I imagine hubby is ready to send out a search party....but they could not SEE ME because of the TALL shelves and short ME!

  As it turned out, as I mentioned, I had come in from the BACK of the store (not realizing it WAS the back) and the checkout was in the other direction where I had not yet ventured, LOL!! Ya can't take me ANYWHERE.... I seem to find a way to get into trouble! (Maybe you can see with this mentality---how I was so easily led into the WTS beliefs, LOL!)

  We stopped a few more places and then We had a nice trip back home... on the way we stopped into see friends we rarely get to visit any more. We were sad to learn that their new son-in-law of a few months, was just deployed to Iraq....(kinda makes your blood run cold when you hear these things)... and then we left there, and came home safe, sound and tired.

  I had bought some newly picked apples (a new brand I have never eaten or tried before) and today I have been busy with making "apple stuff". As much as I hate to see winter coming and know what they indicate.....I really DO enjoy the Autumn days!

  Thanks again for your lovely messages!

  hugs,

  Annie
• 

  V1710

  congratulations on your 40th wedding anniversary. have you been to watkins glen near the the finger lakes? the gorge is stunning and there are some quaint restaraunts in the area. enjoy.
• 

  tula

  From The Times September 21, 2007

  How to cure seven-year itch? Limit marriage to seven years

  Roger Boyes in Berlin

  Marilyn Monroe would have approved. The Seven Year Itch, argues Germany’s most glamorous politician, could be cured by making marriage vows valid for only seven years, thus legislating away what is regarded as the most unstable phase of a relationship.

  The proposal to turn marriage into a kind of time-share arrangement has shocked Germany. It comes from Gabriele Pauli, who is running to become head of the Bavarian conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party.

  “Many marriages survive only because people think it gives them security,” Ms Pauli told a news conference in Munich. “But only love should count.”

  Her idea would apply only to civil marriages. Vows sworn on the altar, “till death us do part”, would not be amended. Civil marriages would be regarded as a limited seven-year contract. “After that initial period each partner would have to say ‘yes’ again in order to prolong the marriage,” she said. “If they do, there is no reason why marriage should not end up as a lifelong partnership, but in the meantime we will have saved the financial and emotional cost of many divorces.”

  The Seven Year Itch - the supposed urge to stray into adultery – was a fixture of advice columns long before Billy Wilder made his 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe as the blonde temptress of a bored husband. The subject matter was deemed so sensitive by Hollywood that the extramarital romance was played out only in the head of the protagonist, acted by Tom Ewell.

  Since then agony aunts have also identified the Two Year Bloat (when complacent husbands start to put on weight), the Fourth Year Slip (when office co-workers start to look more attractive than one’s partner) and any year after the birth of a child as being as perilous to marriage as the seven-year restlessness.

  Johann Reisel, head of Catholic marriage counselling in Bavaria, said: “It sounds to me like renewing a mobile phone contract,” he said. “This is just a random number; statistics show that marriages tend to last either three or four years, or significantly longer than seven years.”

  Although conventional wisdom is that every third marriage in Germany ends in divorce, the reality is worse. By one calculation, 43 per cent of marriages in western Germany (including Bavaria) end in divorce. In 1970, only 15 per cent ended this way.

  Catholic bishops called yesterday for Ms Pauli to be thrown out of the CSU. So too did Edmund Stoiber, who is head of the party and prime minister of Bavaria until next month. Mr Stoiber is standing down from both posts after a campaign by Ms Pauli. Her rivals have seized on her comments as evidence that she is unfit for office.

  Ms Pauli is determined to shake up the party, which has ruled Bavaria for the best part of six decades. She posed for a magazine as a dominatrix, and is often photographed on her motorbike.

  She has been married twice. Her second marriage ended in divorce last February. It lasted seven years.

  Congrats to you both. I think you should share your ideas and secrets of how you have been able to make 40 years.