BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR HELEN PEARL

This is the birthday girl. When asked how old she was her response was, "I'm either 37 or 73." Happy Birthday, Helen Pearl!

Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel you've done a permanent job. ( These two were really enjoying their ice cream cone. Proud they didn't get a picture of me eating mine.)

This group of ladies went out on the town to celebrate our friend, Helen's birthday. She has had a very difficult two years with the illness and recent death of her beloved daughter. We felt that we should make an effort to help cheer her up a little.

One of her favorite places to eat is the Fish Bowl so that is where we headed. We left Dierks around 4:00 p.m. and arrived at the eating place at 5:00 p.m. They were ready for us because I had called ahead hoping they might seat us in a nice secluded place but low and behold they put us right in the big middle of the main dining room. Now if you know any of this group you know we are not shy and have a tendency to get a little loud. Tonight was no different. When we got into really celebrating I noticed some sitting near eyeballing us. The gawking did not slowed this bunch down at all.

We enjoyed a great meal of fried fish with all the trimmings and topped it off with a blueberry muffin as a dessert. I took one with a candle and made sure I took matches to light it. I struck those matches on every object I could find and never got a flame so Helen just pretended to blow out her candle. Since we were in the big middle of a room full of serious fish eaters we left the Happy Birthday song off.

The waitress told us to enjoy ourselves and stay as long as we wanted. We remained for a while seeing who could tell the BIGGEST tale but really seeing who could top that...not sure who won.

Finally we departed that place and went the long way home with the six of us packed in my rig. We finally arrived at Mary's house where we had met. Upon arrival we decided we were not ready to dismiss this party so, as full as we were, we decided to go to Kenya's for dessert. It was at Kenya's that we probably did the most damage. One very sweet gray headed man asked us what we had been drinking. We informed him that water, tea and coffee were the strongest thing we had to drink. He couldn't believe we could have so much fun and not be half lit. With this bunch a good stiff drink would probably just put us to sleep...we don't need anything to make us have fun. That just comes naturally. When we left Kenya's the little waitress, that had enjoyed seeing some of her old teachers giggle and have fun, wanted to know where we were going next. Guess she thought our night was just beginning.

Well, we finally arrived back at Mary's and it was still daylight. When you are our age you forget that there are headlights on the car. We unloaded and headed off in the direction of our homes.

One of the most entertaining things I saw the whole night was two, WAY over 70 year olds, getting out of my third row seats. You have never heard such moaning and groaning trying to get out of that place. Bet next time there will be some flipping going on to see who wins that honor.

So goes the life of the over the hill ladies.

MELINDA

I am really late with this post. I have written and rewritten about Melinda's death and nothing seemed to satisfy me. She was the daughter of my very dear friends and the loss was very devastating to all of us. She was such a smart young lady, a wife a mother and the only child of my friend Helen. Edna sent me this article and it seemed to say just what needed to be said about Melinda so I am including it instead of my humble offering. Thanks to John Lynch for this article about Melinda.

Judge Gilbert, 46, dies

Elected in ’08, she was devoted to kids, families

JOHN LYNCH
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Melinda Gilbert died Wednesday after a long battle with a degenerative nerve disease, leaving behind friends and colleagues who remembered her as a scrappy but compassionate courtroom battler who was devoted to the welfare of families and children.

One of the 6th Judicial Circuit’s three juvenile-court judges, Gilbert was elected in 2008 to replace Rita Gruber, who was elected to the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Gov. Mike Beebe will have to name a replacement for Gilbert who will serve until the next judicial election in two years.

Friends and colleagues recalled Gilbert’s tenacity and her compassion just hours after her death Wednesday from multiple system atrophy, a rare condition that affects the nervous system with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease. It is incurable, according to information from the National Institutes of Health, and more likely to be found in men over 60 than it is in a 46-year-old woman like Gilbert, the mother of teenagers Caroline and Connor and wife of 21 years to Carroll Eugene Walls Jr.

“She was a fighter,” Judge Vann Smith, the district’s administrative judge, said. “It’s a sad day for the judiciary. Not only was Melinda a fine judge, but a great person who really cared about children.”

Gilbert was a “formidable opponent,” but a warm and outgoing friend who could leave those differences behind outside the court, attorney Sam Hilburn said.

“When we would tangle up, it was a fight,” said Hilburn, who served as Gilbert’s campaign treasurer. “You knew you’d been in a trial, but win, lose or draw, she was still your friend.”

Fellow Judge Richard Moore said his 15-year friendship with Gilbert grew out of his respect for work she did for him while in private practice.
“She was as smart as any lawyer I’ve ever known and worked harder,” he said.

Diagnosed with the disease in the fall of 2009, Gilbert fought hard to resist its advances and to keep working, Moore said, even as the condition forced her to use a walker and then a wheelchair before she was forced off the bench in the fall of last year.

“There’s not many who would still be working as long,” he said.
The best description of Gilbert he’s heard is that “if toughness was a cure, she’d be cured,” Moore said.

Gilbert had to go through two elections to win her seat. She lost the first, coming in second against a better known opponent who outspent her, but the 1,180-vote loss was good enough to get Gilbert into a runoff, which she won by 4,580 votes.

She told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that year that the judgeship was the pinnacle of her legal career, which focused mainly on family law.

“I have spent the majority of my career trying to make the legal proceedings more user-friendly for children and also championing the legal rights of children and families,” she said. “It’s [the culmination] of everything I’ve done for the last 20 years representing juveniles and families.”

Gilbert gave the credit for her victory to her supporters, but friends said it was Gilbert’s efforts at personally meeting voters that gave her the victory. She spent the last two weeks of the campaign standing in front of Little Rock City Hall for 11 hours each day to greet early voters, even though she was suffering from pleurisy, bronchitis, an abscessed front tooth, a kidney infection and other problems.

“My grandfather taught me early on that anything worth having is worth working for,” she said. “And you can’t ask volunteers and friends to come out and help if you’re not willing to do it yourself.”

Gilbert

ROAD TRIP TO MUSE BY THE MUSE GIRLS

The girls took a little road trip over into OK and came upon a little town called Muse. They thought this was such a wonderful discovery. The stopped and snapped a few photos. The girls wanted to steal a sign but their mom insisted that pictures was all they were taking for this little town.