Meet Bob & Ruth!

So, let me tell you about our good friends Bob and Ruth who live across the lake.....

We used to come up here to Lake Wallenpaupack for weekends...a lot of weekends. We have always loved it up here. It was a nice escape from our co-op on Long Island. I think we used to come up about 12-16 weekends a year. I mean, we really loved coming here.

One weekday we were home at our apartment and there was a knock on the door. It was this guy named Bob and he was running for the Board of Directors. I said hello and he said, "Hey, I saw you in Pennsylvania this past weekend!" I was like, "Hmmmmmph. That's odd." It turns out that Bob and Ruth have a house here on the lake.

From that day forward, we would still come up to the lake, but we would also have these good people to visit with and we would also have these good people on Long Island to visit with. They are our parents' age and they have two sons of their own, but call us their "other set of kids." They tell us how it is, give us advice, ask if we are working enough, make sure that we are doing smart things with our money, and just show us how you can really still be in love after many, many years. They have since retired, sold their co-op on Long Island, and moved up here two years ago full-time, but, alas, they are moving again to some unknown place....they just haven't decided yet where they want to be.

Ruth has had cancer now for, I think, about seven years. She is not quite in remission, but the tumors in her lungs are neither growing or shrinking. Last week they went down to Long Island where she had this CyberKnife procedure.

Fast forward to yesterday -- it was a beautiful day and Rich wasn't have a fun time with his back. I spoke to my mother on the phone for a while in the morning after I had gone out and done all my errands. Rich got up and we had lunch and then I was going to come up to my office to work. The phone rang and it was Bob asking if we wanted to go out for a boat ride. Well, being I was a little down because Rich's back was killing him, I, of course, jumped at the opportunity but then thought of Rich and threw the phone down to him. He opted not to go, but agreed that there was no reason why I shouldn't go. So I did.

We had a great time. It was so nice and warm and sunny and we had a lot of laughs and we had some tears, too, over Rich's and my current situation. They did give some good advice, especially as to stop seeing these dopey panel physicians and get some real doctors involved. I guess we were out on the lake for about an hour or so. We then hung out on the dock for a while with their neighbors and just chatted it up.
They had asked me to stay for dinner, but I knew that I should really get home and have dinner with Rich so I did, but I stopped at the ice cream stand and got a chocolate egg cream because I really did feel as if I was on vacation!

Needless to say, I was in dreamland by about 9:00! All that sun and fresh air did me in!!!!

~b.