Goodbye my Sister

That’s surely not my sister
Lying in the heavy wooden coffin.
Her, with the poofed up hair,
The bright blue suit, hands folded nearly

She's cold, for God's sake,
give her a blanket, wake her up.
bring a smile to her lips,
a glitter to her eyes.

Up Edie, times awasting,
we need you, kid
There are dishes to wash,
pies to bake, hearts to heal.


You climbed higher than I,
In trees when we played.
You pinched my butt, laughed
at my blush and ducked my slap

Come back, my sister, I miss
your mischief, your ready laugh
Me, the older one, promise to listen
Not to laugh and sneer

But the lid comes down
the coffin is lowered.
Tears to tears, dust to dust
Edith doesn't live here anymore.

Her sister 2003
©Natalie Norman Baer

Writers Group

That's George and Sandy at our biweekly writer's group here in Kailua-Kona. We've been together some seven or eight years reading our latest story, memoir, poem. George has had two or three stories published, Aurora finishing up her murder mystery, Alaina her years in Ireland as a child and Jerry his novel of a search for a missing GI. I'm still at "Witches in Season" the story of my 9th great grandmother who died in 1692 at Salem jail adjudged a witch and bits and pieces of memories. I don't know what will become of it all, perhaps packed in a box marked "Read after I'm gone".

Sunday in the Thirties

This is the four of us on a Sunday. In years earlier than this, Mother would dress us in our best clothes, sit us on the couch and say,"Don't move", while she readied herself to take us to church. I loved my Sunday School with its singing and stories but absolutely hated church, the long dreary sermons, the sitting still, make no noise, relieved only by the ocassional hymn. Mother would say, "You can give one hour a week to the Lord." but I didn't think so, and quit going to service as soon as I got away to college.
Our main meal on Sunday was after church, usually a fat chicken with lots of good, overcooked vegetables, my dad carving at the head of the table and passing each plate down. Afternoons in the years before the war (there was only one war in my youth - the Second World War) were to be spent quietly, no running around outdoors, but playing with dolls was OK. We Baptists (Northern Freewill Baptists) didn't believe in dancing or playing cards on Sunday. But visiting relatives was fine and we'd load up our small Ford coupe, all four girls, Mother and Dad, and be off to visit the Simonini's, my Father's people. They were Catholic and didn't have the strictures of Sabbath behavior that we had at home - as long as my grandmother didn't know about it, we played with flair outdoors.
The war changed all that - fashions of behavior loosened up, we could even shop on Sundays, imagine!!
I wouldn't go back to those prewar years, I prefer the tug and tussle of life as I live it now but those early memories remain tucked away like a delicate handkerchief to take out and touch on this Sunday afternoon so many miles and years away from my New England childhood.
Natalie-Hawaii
©Natalie Norman Baer

Star Spangled Banner

I was a young adult during the cold war, fearing USSR, the atom bomb. During the Cuban Crisis when we lived in Southern Indiana within range of such danger, I found a place for our family to hide under the basement stairs.
Two years ago, almost fifty years later we were on a three week river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburgh,Russia. I was so proud to hear their army band play our anthem.
I have never belted out our national anthem as lustily and loudly as I did that summer month standing in front of their World War II Armory in Moscow.

The Last of us Four

Here we are, a combination of first generation ItalianAmerican and 11th generation Yankee. We were a happy family of sisters - that's Doris on the left, a real beauty who was laid low by Tuberculosis when only 15 but survived and lived until her seventies, the first of us to go. Next is Nancy, my closest companion all through our lives growing up in Rhode Island and Hawaii in our later lives; I'm the second from the right, a bit shy and oversensitive (I still worry a lot about doing the right thing); last my kid sister, Edie, you can see the devilish gleam in her eyes.
We might have had our spats as children but as adults we were always there for each other.
I miss my sisters, never expected that I'd outlive them all. But life is that way, we don't get to choose, just to love and appreciate each other while we are alive.
As we used to say - "See ya later, alligator".

Before the Drought

That's our view looking down from our lanai - at the time this was taken we had had several months of frequent rain. Living as we do on the side of Mt. Hualalai, I can almost make up my climate. On the news report, given over two hundred miles away in Honolulu, I hear that the weather in Kona is clear and sunny. At the same time, I look out the window at a steady rain. We live on the Big Island (called Hawaii). When people ask, I describe our location as a mile or so above MaDonalds in Kona. When I hear on the news that if we don't mail in our census form, census workers will call on us. Sure - if they can find us. Needing service, we tell the worker, "Drive in exactly two miles from Palani junction, turn right at the Geraniums, come down .9 of a mile, be sure to stay on concrete strips, open the gate, the one that has a decoration from Christmas 2009, turn left, go another half acre, open another gate and park at the top of the hill. Sometimes, we just give up and meet the visitor on the highway.
Four other families beside ours "live off the grid". Telephone and electric companies have never run their lines to serve us. We survive with solar power, propane and generator power. Very nicely, we say, as we laugh when the power goes out over the island.
Months of drought - not a drop except from the hose - have taken the lovely green groundcover, handwatering couldn't save it. The orange tree there has blossomed but not produced fruit and I'm redisgned the plat. My method is called - whatever grows, keep it. Purslane and Akikuli (sedums?) are spreading and another picture will come. Just give it time.

Sailing the Andes

From my journal of trip to South America:
We are bushed,, weary, fagged out, worn out and tired. Our wakeup call came 5 minutes AFTER we were supposed to board the bus. (We two who are always the first to arrive.) We threw on our clothes, scooped up toiletries from the bathroom and ran for the elevator. Our tour guide met us as we got off the elevator with an apology. As we climbed onto the bus, we were met with applause.
It was a drizzly day that turned into a steady rain. Our trip "sailing the Andes" was by bus alternating with boat across each lake between Argentina and Chile, across the Andes. As we crossed one lake, our boat would toot twice for the arrival of another boat with a passenger, or sometimes to pick up goods from our boat. On one leg while riding the bus, we were told the road had been washed out and we were to cross it by foot, holding onto a rope. We'd be met then by the bus to Chile. As we approached the gap in the road, our driver had other plans and gunned the bus across the washout (as I looked for a place to roll in case the bus fell down the mountain.) Lunch was atop a mountain that we had to ride up on a gondola. Made a great Christmas card that year.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Early Writings

In my first year of high school, I was assigned the task of writing my autobiography. It began, "At thirteen, I look back on the trials and tribulations of my life." I wish I had that essay, it would be interesting to learn of such "trials and tribulations." I look in vain in my diary of the years from age 11, when I began keeping one. I see such entries as "was baptised. It was very nice." In my mind I see the lake, my long gown. I feel the cold water, laying back in Rev. White's arm and going under. I look in the diary written when my sister Doris was at Wallum Lake, hospitalized with tuberculosis. In the diary, the tempo of my days never changed: "Went to school." "Report cards come out soon." "Accepted Jesus as my savior," and so on.
My memory says more: the disappointment when I made my first "C" and I thought, "I'm not as smart as I thought I was." My mother telling me "Go say goodbye to your sister," the day she was to leave for the hospital. Not knowing what to say to her, I ran into my room and found my most precious possession - my Bible - to give my sister.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Don't call me names

Say, "hello ladies" to me and my back stiffens. Class me as a "golden ager" and gall rises in my mouth. The only time I like "senior citizen" is when I get a cut on the price.
Why am I a different person than 20-30-50 years ago?
Living is more serene for me: I'm happier, less tired, more productive. My tongue is sharper, I search for words and I've stopped dying my hair.
©Natalie Norman Baer

becoming Invisible

I first realized I had become invisible when, wheeling my grocery cart around a stand of wine I was examining, I came carthead to carthead with a young woman, possibly 30 years younger than I. She looked surprised, moved her head, jiggled her cart to move between me and the wine stand. "Move", she said, No "Please", no smile, just the toss of her head idicating where. Brought up to mind, to obey a stronger force, I backed up and moved to the side. Then anger atruck and I whipped my cart around, almost striking her small child trailing behind. "Look out, little girl," I cackled, without a pause in my motion. No sound from the other woman - it was as if I weren't there.
Then it happened again, another store, another move around the corner. This time it was a man, a man of dignity, white haired, wearing a badge. I stepped aside quickly as he drove his cart straight at me. This time there was no nod of the head. Again, it was as if I weren't there!
How long have I been invisible? I dress nicely, my hair has a becoming length abd color, my husband likes my cooking but often when I speak or call out to him, he doesn't answer. I'm not there!
Thomas Mann in "Magic Mountain" wrote: "A man lives not only his personal life as an individual, but life of his epoch and his contemporaries." Perhaps it is not only I who have become invisible but the entire babbling, fault finding, me-first era that I live in will go down in history - Invisible to the last.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Trapped in Machu Picchu

Traveling in South America we toured Macchu Pichu and then, as we slept, a storm struck. My memory of that:

The rain seemed light to us down
in the village of Agua Calliente
but high above, thousands of feet above
it was enough to move the earth
And with the earth was a boulder
Or two to dam the stream
that once poured so freely down
the ridge to the river below


How could we know, so comfortable in bed
of the horror that stream caused
as it broke and tumbled with the rocks and
boulders through homes with people once alive

Did they hear it before their houses crumbled?
Did they lie beneath the ruins?
or did they sweep along with the river
as it reached toward the sea?


Everything seemed normal that next
sunny day, shops were open,
vendors hawked their wares while
tourists viewed and ate their meals



Behind the fence is all that remains

I remember

Dear Moki

March 27
Dear Moki,
Now you did it, bad enough that you jumped our fence and ran away, but you took the grandchildren's dog with you. We miss you both - Kona for his sweetness, you for your bounce and energy. I remember the day you were born - one of eight wiggling bits of life. You were two months old when we chose you, with your white ruff, brown feet, and sleek black coat. The day we brought you home, you jumped out of the car, squeezed under the gate and trotted back to your old home. I brought you back and that night you cried but never puddled the floor.
Soon you were part of the family. "Bedtime", Buzz would call and you'd hop on the couch as we went upstairs. Later we'd hear you quietly pad up the stairs and settle on the landing. You'd crawl as close to our bed as Foolsie the cat would allow. Remember how she had a hissy fit when you got too close? The bed was HER territory. I guess the floor got too hard because sometime during the night you'd tromp downstairs for that soft couch.
So where are you now? Did someone pick you up, did you get caught in a pig trap, fall into one of the big sinkholes? Surely you are too smart for that, But you've been gone a week, I'm not crying anymore but I kiss your dear face, your playfulness - tossing your "Squeekie into the air for us to catch. I miss the sound in the morning: the little mews, tiny woofs, the thump of your tail. I miss you kid, you were our special one.
We left the door open at night the first two days you were gone - I cried when Buzz carried your food and pans upstairs. It seemed so final. It's still there waiting for you. I'd like to say, "come home, all's forgiven", but I don't want to start hoping again, it's too painful.
We love you, we miss you.
Come home.
Mother

March 28
Dear Moki,
Shame on you leaving your dad who stroked you, played with you, watched you outside while you did your business. Last night he had his first dream, (he says he never dreams). He dreamed you came home again.
So, come on, boy, get with it, and show your face again.
All's forgiven.
Mother

April 3
Dear Moki,
Our sorrow is healing, we only hope you are in the care of good people and not down in a sinkhole where no one can hear you,
Dad took down the barrier where the fence had fallen and stacked the wood to plug the holes. Remember how you used to sneak out through the fence? You'd wait until we weren't looking, then zip through with a yip and a ha-ha. Well the ha-ha is on you, isn't it?
Kona's mom still acts cross with me - she doesn't say so but I know she blames us for you leading Kona astray. She has a new dog now, looks like Kona with the Akita face. We went down to the Humane Society to see what is available in case we want to have another friend in the family. Have to think about it. You were lots of fun but a pain in the butt, too.
Well, boy, we miss you. I still tear up but another day is coming and we'll all live through it. You'll not be forgotten, your puppy mischief - the ragged edges of the carpet, the scars on my arm - will always rimind me of you. You'll not be forgotten.
Buck up, wherever you are. You carry our love with you.
Mother

I actually wrote these letters to Moki in 2001. Since then we have acquired two more dogs from the Humane Society but to this day, nine years later, whenever I see a dog in the back of a pickup truck, I look to see if it could be our Moki.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Stitching Away

My sixth grade granddaughter entered this poster in "Sight is wonderful" and I copied the dragon, on the left side of her poster, to canvas-using a variety of stitches and threads.
Natalie-Hawaii

Meeting Ralph

Today is the 83rd birthday of Ralph Norman, my first husband, who died in 1973. I want my grandchildren to know how I met him.

Meeting Ralph

It was 1946 and the boys were back from the war. I walked into registration at Evansville College, not knowing what to expect but I noticed immediately there were a lot of men around. The GI bill had been passed and millions of veterans were enrolling in colleges. As I looked around I figured there were at least 10 men to every girl. And I was engaged! On this first day of my new life, however, I’d left my ring in a drawer at home.
In the busy hall, full of tables and crowded with young people, I stopped at the first table. I was asked,
“What is your major?”
I hadn’t thought about this, but guessed I should be practical and said, “Business.”
After filling out required papers, I looked around and saw a table marked “Band”. There I met the band director and told him I played the marimba. He welcomed me and suggested I might like to join the group at a rehearsal in the band room later that afternoon.
I easily found the band room next to the path I would take to go home later that day. I saw a wooden one-story structure with three doors – one to the office area and two to a large rehearsal room. I avoided the gaggle of students crowded around the first two doors and chose the one farthest to the right, entered and sat down in a chair. I looked around the room that was rapidly being filled with students holding various instruments: a clarinet here, flute there. I listened to squeaks and howls as the group warmed up. In the back I saw the percussion section, three tympani’s sprawled across the middle of the rear row; a dark haired boy turning knobs with one hand while thumping on the surface with a mallet on the other. Next to him stood a bass drum on a stand, which another boy pounded with a larger mallet. Then came a snare drum and a third boy whisking over its surface with a brush.
“I bet my marimba will fit over there in the corner. This is going to be interesting.”
I’m sure the entire band was giving me the once over, this strange girl from some unknown town – maybe Oakland, just outside Evansville, or even as far away as Terre Haute. No one would guess I was from an odd place called Rhode Island.
The warm-up began with the long notes of a scale, the director pointing to various players to adjust their tone. He announced the music to be played and I heard rustling as students flipped through their stack of tunes. Soon he led them, swinging into a lively march and I smiled, I loved military music.
“Dum, de Dum”, I hummed when I felt a warm splash on my face. I turned, surprised and looked at a plump young man holding his trombone in one hand while he squirted its slide with an atomizer, flipping it up into my face. I looked away but glanced again and noticed his moustache, full face, and brown hair swept back to lie long at the back in the current ducktail style. I wasn’t impressed.
Sometime later we talked and he asked to drive me home. Mother always warned us girls not to take a ride with stranger, but it was only two blocks so it couldn’t hurt. We walked toward a beautiful, sleek, dark green roadster convertible. He flipped his hand to the mufflers sticking out beneath the rear bumper -
“Twin Smittys,” he said.
“Wow, twin Smittys,” I said trying not to display my ignorance.
He ran his hand over the side of the car.
“Seven coats of lacquer.”
“Gee, I can see my face in it.”
He smiled and led me further, tapping on the top of the car.
“Lowered it four inches.”
“Gee, wow, four inches,” I echoed.
Reaching the front of the car, he rapped his knuckles on the hood.
:Dual carbs.”
I’d run out of exclamations and reached for the door handle, but he said,
“Wait,” And opened the door for me. In the twenty-seven years I would know him, I never opened a door when this man was around.
As we drove the two blocks to my home, I opened a textbook on the floor and discovered his name: Ralph Norman.
“Strange,” I thought, “Two first names”
Later that night I excitedly told my mother and sister of my first day adventure at college, the buildings, the band, the many men, and the classy convertible.
I finally mentioned its owner. “But, wouldn’t you know, with all these men around what do you suppose I get but some fat boy with a moustache!”
I have often wondered what my life would have been like, had I instead of taking the door to the right, sitting by the first chair trombonist, took the door to the left and sat beside the last chair clarinetist.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Fear

The Bats
Forestdale, the birth and death of my security, has been my family home since the late sixteen hundreds when three brothers came from the ironworks in Lynn, just south of Boston, Massachusetts. They weren’t the first to arrive in Sandwich, the pretty village at the head of Cape Cod. But they were most likely the first to ask Plymouth, the mother town of Cape Cod, for permission to settle and to cultivate the land just south of that town and call it Greenville. Here some ancestor built the house now lived in by my Great Grandmother Fisher. As their families grew, they added on to what would be called the “new part”. Here I live with my three sisters, the big girls – Nancy and Doris who ride a bus each day too school – and the baby – Edith. I see her on the table, waving and cooing as Mother powders her, lifts her, and puts her in her crib. Daddy is somewhere called “Down south.”

I’m in bed, and beyond the kerosene lamp, the room is dark. But Mother is here, folding my hands and fingers into a steeple, to hear my prayer of

Now I lay me down to sleep
I Pray the Lord my Soul to Keep
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I add countless God Blesses to keep Mother with me but at last, I have to finish with “Make me a good girl.”

Mother tucks my blanket under my mattress, kisses me on the forehead, picks up the lantern, and leaves me in the dark. I am two and hate to see her leave because I know what comes next: streaking out of the attic through a hole into the hallway, bats flutter around the bedroom I share with my older sisters. What a chit-chit-chit sound they make, their wings whirring. I hide my head under the blanket, fearing those little creatures will fasten their claws in my hair, as we all call for help. I peek out and see Nanna, my grandmother, in her green mobcap and long cotton dress as she waves a dust mop at the bats, saying “shoo, shoo”. The pests fly out the window. She leaves us alone again in the dark to the creaky sounds and musty smell of a very old house.

No one tells me they are gentle creatures. They are simply part of a dark world with shapes and shadows ready to pounce and frighten me. My fragile security has been shattered, not to return until morning comes with its bright sun and warmth.
I like what it is saying, but on its own, it feels incomplete, it’s mmissing its context – how it relates to you; your life.

We lived in our Great-Gramma’s house. It was old when the boys in Blue marched south to fight those in Grey, smells of rotting wood, mildew and mold. At night bats streaked out of the attic. They flapped and fluttered through our room as we cowered under our covers. Nanna came in with her dust mop and shooed them out the window for their midnight hunt. We slept and never know when they returned to their attic roost.

Does anyone remember the Real Old Songs?

"I'd love to live in loveland with a girl like you - dadidadidada. Dahdihdahdida" One of those songs we kids would sing while we made the beds or walked from the bus. That was before Frank sinatra and the beginning of WW2 (to my generation there is only one war) when more serious sentimental songs were written.
We'd sing, "I want to wake up in the morning where the rhododendrums grow," as we drove from our home in Rhode Island to the old family homestead in Forestdale, Cape Cod. It would be Memorial Day and time to put flowers on the graves. We didn't know a Rhododendrum from an Azalia, and still don't, but the song had a pretty lilt.
Earlier times it would be "Red Sails in the sunset" with our cousins - the Italian ones in Shawmut. That was in the thirties when we could still swim in the waters of Narragansett Bay. We could run right into the water, it was bathtub warm, not like the clear water of the lakes at home in Greenville, a few miles away. One summer we were splashing in the bay, and the next year signs were up of "polluted water." Seventy years later the signs might still be there and the lakes still clear.
What were the other songs before "Red Sails"? I remember sitting somewhere on a porch when I was very young. Time and place whisper in my memory. We could just hum along with everyone, before anyone criticized us for not having a voice:
"Just two of us together, we'll plan our honeymoon." "Just cruising down a river on a Sunday afternoon."
We had our own version of rap and no one knew it.

I want you to know your Grandfather

I wrote this to my grandchildren ten years ago.

Dear Children,
Today would be your grandfather Ralph Norman’s 73rd birthday. A good man, a talented, gifted man, he achieved much in his short life of forty-five years, He was an only child, born when his mother was in her thirties, a much loved child. He was the only grandchild and only nephew – hovered over by doting elders. What chance such a child had to grow independent and resourceful is amazing to me.
Up to the time we married, (he was 23 and I 22), each day his mother laid out his clothes to wear. I refused that task and let him drop his clothes where he wished each night. There they lay, trousers on top of shirts and shirts on top of trousers until nothing was left to wear except what lay wrinkled on the floor. He said not a word, just picked up a crumpled outfit and walked out the door. I was so embarrassed!I could have handed him the iron but instead I began to hang his clothes in the closet. Somewhere along the life of our marriage, habits shifted and we both mellowed - me out of my self-righteousness and him out of his sloppiness. To be kind to both of us, let’s say we grew up a little.
Ralph was musical and played a wide range of horns from trombone to French horn, clarinet and saxophone to bassoon with miscellaneous instruments in between. The war years of 1941 to 1945 gave him many opportunities for professional playing. He was in the Evansville, Indiana Symphony at the age of thirteen; led his own band when I first know him in college.
Ralph was overweight most of his life. Considering his childhood, I’m not surprised. Of German background, his family ate food soaked in grease on liberal grease; beans in bacon fat, the table loaded with two or three meats, potatoes. I don’t remember a simple salad – just loads of fattening, good old German cooking.
Till later,

Your Grandmother

Gift from Nanna Fisher

"Nanna", the severe little woman we were always glad to have come to stay and equally glad to see go. She was our Grandmother - Nanna Fisher - practical nurse, traveler, widow. I remember her white uniform, her white shoes and stockings, her brisk manner in discussing "private parts of the body". It was embarrassing as a child to be asked if I'd had "my bowel movement today."
I did not have a close relationship with her until I was married and long gone from home. She seemed to me to be critical, bossy, not much fun to be with. But her baking was superb, those little freshly cooked donut holes she would pop into our mouths, those Parker House rolls, raisin filled cookies, chocolate cake with frosting to lick from the bowl. I have her recipes but have never matched her skill.
We minded her well, she was tough. I never remember her putting an arm around me. Her soothing touch was more apt to be the sting of iodine on a knee scrubbed of its scab.
But her influence has carried me well through life. She was always herself - her standards of exellence, what she would say that made the difference. "Children don't have nerves." she'd tell me when I complained of a headache. From her comment that she didn't need an alarm clock but could wake herself at will stayed with me and to this day I can wake on the dot of 7:00. To this day I'm uncomfortable lying in bed in the morning - she'd tell us uf we were awake, it was time to get up.
Her true gift to me was the person she was A woman without self-pity, she continued to expand her outlook throughout her life. She advised us when new mothers of with new ways to parent, to raise our children. At that time, she was in her seventies. She read biography and history and staying up with the news right into her nineties.
The greatest gift to me was the last time I saw her. Sitting in a chair with the book "The Pumpkin Papers" in her lap, she spoke of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers. Then, out of the blue, she gave me her gift: "I am ready to go." No whining about aches, no misery about age, she left me that spirit of life, the knowing that age and death is not something to fear.
©Natalie Norman Baer
When that time comes, I too will be ready.

Being Nice

In World War II we fought the Japanese and years after that war we heard that our grade school principal had a GI son who stayed in Japan and married a woman there. It was years before he brought his family to his hometown. What a shock that must have been for our provincial community. After all, George Washington was said to sleep in the tavern across from our Baptist church.
Greenville was a pretty town in those days, full of apple trees. In the fall Mr. Windsor would open his roadside stand to sell a wide variety of applies: Macintosh, Winesap, Northern, Baldwin. We, our family, didn't need to buy any of them in my grade school days - we just ate them off the trees around our home as we walked through the orchards to catch the bus to school each day. Fifty years later when I visit my childhood home, I am saddened to find all the fruit trees around the house are gone and I see only empty fields.
I remember we pitied the French-Canadian children whose parents worked in the fabric mills at the edge of town. Mother would say, "Be nice to them", as we took the clothes we'd outgrown to their homes.
But it is the "being nice," and "feeling sorry" that I speak of today - unknow to my mother it put up a barrier, an unseen wall between us, accentuated us as different. How much richer our childhood would have been had we shared their heritage, heard their family stories of coming to America.
It would be many years before I discovered my Mother was an eleventh generation "Yankee", whereas my Father was one of the first generation Italians to be born here. What we could have shared with our French-Canadian classmates, weren't we also an intesting mix?

The new blogger

I e-mailed my daughter "your mother is a blogger" amd I could hear her say, "Oh Jeez." But I was wrong - she has more class than that, in fact didn't discourage me at all. Still, I'm not giving her my blog name until I master this new phenomena. I want to design a colorful space with original designs, plaster it with photos of "landscape before drought", "Natalie with Russian bear", add music when I learn how to input it, that sort of thing.
I've given the blogsite to my grandchildren who think Granma is "cool" and warn me not to hit on advertising buttons or say anything I might later be ashamed of. But I'm already "akamai" (Hawaiian for smart), about that sort of thing. A few years ago I entered several surveys, seeking to win $500, etc. My e-mail (now obsolete) has since haunted me with over 800 messages and I hope to eventually overload the system at 1000 or so and pass it into the graveyard of broken dreams. Did anyone ever win one of those surveys?
I can get hooked on blogging, not the ones I write but the ones I find of other people. I love reading about 30 years olds who don't worry about arthritis and stiff knees. Who cares about the 7 year itch compared to being 80 and considering mortality?
No fear, I'll be here another twenty years.
Natalie-Hawaii