Day 83 of 365 Days of Being Thankful

      Today I am thankful that I had a birthday lunch with my close friend, Amy. We were born in the same year! I gave her a small gift from our favorite store!

         Amy is beyond a doubt the nicest person I have the privilege to know. She is a good friend through the best of times and the bad times. Amy is a hospice nurse and you have to be a special, compassionate, loving person to do that job. Amy has all those qualities and more. My older kids all grew up together with her kids.  Amy is a true and loyal friend.  She came to so many days of my Amy's civil trial. I will never forget that she did that, it meant so much to us!  We talk about my attorney because she was at the seven week trial so much.  We refer to him as Slick Slade because he was such a sharp attorney.  Our older kids all grew up together. They were all in the school music and theatre  programs.  Her oldest son Aaron is a neurologist,  her daughter Leah is a Rabbi, and her youngest son Danny is an accomplished  musician.  Amy and Dan chaperoned a lot of the band, orchestra, and chorus middle school and high school trips together. They went bungee jumping together with my Amy!  My kids never wanted me to chaperone because they said I acted too much like a teacher.  As the saying goes, you take yourself with you wherever you go! Amy and I see the world through the same viewfinder. We were both big on having our kids be respectful, responsible, hard working, good students, and  be thankful and write thank you notes. I never allowed my kids to use  a gift or spend gift money until they wrote a thank you note. She and her husband are going to move and live in a townhouse in a new development near me! Her kids are all grown and out of the house so there is no reason to keep up such a big house. We had so much fun eating, chatting , and catching up!  I am so thankful to have Amy as a close friend.  I really just love everything about her, especially her name!. Amy lost her mom when she was a young girl, her dad did a wonderful job raising her. If I have a choice in my next life, I want to be with all the friends I love so much and Amy is one of them.
      I told Amy that I was going to see a psychic on Monday.  Amy is a believer and knows that I am a skeptic! She thinks I would be a believer if a psychic told me something that only Amy and I would know. But none of the readings I have had have been like that, the information is always so general. Amy's dad was a Rabbi and when she was growing up, women did not have Bat Mitzvahs.  Amy decided to get Bat Mitzvahed in her thirties. The worker at the Temple asked her where the other Rabbi was after  the service. She said there was only one Rabbi. He insisted there was another Rabbi dressed in white at the back of the Temple, he described the Rabbi and the description fit her dad. She asked me who I was seeing and I said a psychic named Nellie Walters.  I got her name from another bereaved mom. Amy knew her, the psychic use to be a hospice nurse with Amy.  Amy said she was amazing, that she had all the nurses over to her house and they would have wine and cheese and she would "read" them.  Amy says she is fantastic so I am hoping for an excellent reading. It really is a small world.  Yesterday my snow plow guy told me he went to school with my Amy and today my friend Amy knew the psychic I am seeing on Mon.  And that psychic lives about 45 minutes away so it isn't like we live in the same township. Recently when I was at an ER with Olivia, this young woman kept staring at me.  She was friendly and started chatting with us.  She remembered me from teaching at  Springfield Middle School.  Another young woman was sitting there and said, I thought I recognized you from teaching at Chichester High School and I told her that I also taught there. When Olya was in middle school, she and her friends met a group of boys from Springfield Middle School at a dance.  She invited them over one day and I remember their faces as they came in.  I could hear them in the basement saying...OMG, your mom is a teacher at our school! Another time Dan drove Olya and her friend to a party in Ridley. Dan waited around because there wasn't a parent home. The dad was driving one of his kids to softball practice.  When the dad got back, he and Dan chatted and Dan said, my daughter Renee Fledderman teaches at Ridley High School, do you know her?  And he said no, but I do know a Colleen Fledderman who teaches with me at Springfield Middle School. Small world!