"Please Come for Mama's Pie & Daddy's Coffee."

That was the invitation to the home of one of our friends tonight...... please join me for pie and coffee-- mama's pie and daddy's coffee. Our friend J lives two streets away from us..... she has a tiny little Yorkie that she walks every morning-- the cutest little dog, and not at all yappy and hyper as Yorkies can sometimes be.

Wonderful lady... she reminds me of the actress Lauren Bacall, and I can just picture J standing next to Humphrey Bogart. However, J would rather be standing next to Johnny Depp, especially if he's in his Jack Sparrow get-up. She thinks Jack Sparrow is "bad to the bone," and she means bad in a very good way.

J also invited another neighbor, B, who lives around the corner from her. The spouses of both J and B have passed away (years ago) and of course, my husband and I have wondered if this is the beginning of a budding romance. A December - December romance, since they are both well into their senior years. J and B come to our Charades parties, and they have enjoyed each other's company during our party nights.

But tonight was just the four of us. J made her mama's chocolate pie, which my husband and I have had before when we went to her home. J uses her daddy's coffee pot to make the coffee-- very strong, as she warns all of her guests. I'm a tea-drinker, so J is always prepared with boiling water and an assortment of teas for me.

After the pie, we played a word game called "Man Bites Dog." Fun game, with a huge deck of cards..... each of the cards has either one or two words printed on it and the object of the game is to make newpaper headlines from the five cards you are dealt. The headlines can be funny or sad, naughty or nice-- but they have to make sense and be a reasonable headline with a subject, a verb, and an object. Of course, if you can throw in an adjective or two, you get more points. We didn't keep score, we just played the game for an hour and had fun with it.

After that, the four of us discussed the state of the world we live in, and compared it to the good old days of the 1930s, the 1940s, and the 1950s. Of course, we solved all of the world's problems, and came up with reasonable explanations as to what's wrong with the 21st century.

Nice night...... simple and nice.... just like the good old days.