A good night with good friends

It is my only day off today. I was bone tired but was going to a friend's house for dinner with another friend. All three of us worked at the bank together for several years. There is a large gap in our ages-I am 42, Casey just turned 30 last week and Megan is 23. I could literally be Megan's mom. Casey started at the bank when she was 17 as an after school teller. She became like a little sister to me. She is the one who I first started 'giving advice' to with a list of what to stock her first apartment kitchen with, gave her some old pans and dishes, and a list of easy recipes. I have watched her go from a high school kid to a paramedic who just bought her first home. I wanted to cry tonight as she showed us her house-she was so proud, and rightfully so. Not that I had anything to do with how she turned out, but I felt some kind of pride in seeing what an awesome person she has become. When we met my oldest daughter was 5 and my youngest was 2-1/2. My oldest will be 18 in two weeks and my youngest is starting drivers training in about 3 weeks. As we sat there laughing and they filled me in on things that have been happening in the town they grew up in and the town where I worked for so long, I was struck by how our ages didn't seem to matter. When we first started hanging out-the three of us-Megan wasn't even legal to drink. Now Megan is married and has a 4 month old son. I'm getting ready to send mine off into the real world, and Casey is looking for someone who love her forever. I told her to hurry up, because I won't look good in pink taffeta much longer. It goes back to a dream I had about her before she graduated and I got to be a bridesmaid, wearing the pink taffeta. I told her that even if I didn't get to be in the wedding, I was still wearing pink taffeta to the event.

Here are the three of us at Megan's wedding. Casey is on the left, center-well, the bride, and me on the right. It seems so odd that they are closer in age to my daughter than to me.

I was in charge of dessert for tonight's dinner. First I overslept. I had planned on making turtle brownies. I woke up at 4 and had to be at Casey's at 6. No time to make them from scratch from the recipe over at Sunday Baker. Plan two: make them with a brownie mix and jzuzz them up. Nope-the mix I just bought was gone. Plan three: make some bars with a cake mix and evaporated milk. Yah, the can expired in July-why I even had any is beyond me as I normally don't have anything in my repertoire that calls for it. It is now 4:30, I have yet to shower and am ready to cry. I spy the Heath toffee bits and remember Cathy's post over at Noble Pig on the cookies she made after an especially trying day. Since I don't have her permission to reprint it here, I will show the pictures. You will have to trek on over to her site (she is in my blog list, but I know most of you know her site-it's awesome!) for the recipe, but they were a HUGE hit for dessert. I left them with Casey; she said she was bringing them to work tomorrow for her 16 hour shift. There may be some sharing in the rig.

Come to Mama

Ummm, I have no idea where that one went, burp.

The only change I made was I used butter flavor Crisco, as baking cookies with butter never works well for me. I think it is the oven-may need to be re-calibrated, but am hoping a new one shows up soon. Until that time, I will continue my shortening procedure until then.

Happy Valentine's Everyone! Oh no, I forgot his card!