Housecleaning

I went looking for some old documents on Word. Since I wrote them, I have replaced my hard drive, lost some things, and added others.

By dint of searching via various lanes of 'documents', I found what I was looking for. I also found quite a few other things I have written over the years. Some are good, some are bad, and some needed to be deleted.

Word being the intuitive, user-friendly program that it is (sarcasm font off) it took me a while to even figure out how to delete the old c**p. I THINK I managed that, although some of the various Word indices still list items I sent to the recycle basket which I then emptied.

We'll see about that at a later date.

Anyway, in the stuff I had written in the past and not taken further, I discovered two or three starts to pieces of fiction that I never re-visited. I may just do that and see if they still have any ability to call me. Maybe someday, I'll finish one.

I also found a few essays that I wrote to express myself before I started this blog. Some of THOSE just might make it here, with a bit of editing. I need to re-read them again, to see if I still agree (or at least feel about) what I wrote then.

I have read that nothing written on a computer is ever truely lost. (Absent taking out the hard drive and destryoing it with a hammer and some battery acid) That appears to be true of what I put in Word. Whether any of it deserves to live forever is another matter. But if it doesn't, why did I start this blog?

Anyway, a word to all of us. Look at your old files. Are any of them something you want your heirs to discover?

Friends are the Families We Have by Choice

Friends are the families we have by choice.

I have some friends for certain emotional situations

I have some friends for certain social situations

I have some friends for certian intellectuial situations.

I have some friends for certain undeterminable situations.

And my family? Those persons who share the same DNA our parents shared at our conception........?

A friend with whom I can share emotional, social, intellectuial, and undeterminatable situations?

THAT is a friend I call family by choice.

Changing focus

I realized that since we got back from our trip, I have been less inclined to post. Somehow, it doesn't seem worth my while to write, or yours to read. I think I fugured out why.

While we were in California, we visited my mother. Mother is in assisted living, and we have hired someone to screen her mail. She had managed to get on EVERYONE's "gimme" list. Every day, she received four or five solicitations for contributions to various charitable causes. Some of them were more charitable to their directors than others. She felt overwhelmed. She couldn't decide which organizations to give money to. She saved much of the mail, inundating her office space. She gave sums to suspect organizations. It was too much for her.

We put an end to the deluge of begging mail, but she complained that it was hardly worth opening her mailbox anymore.

So, I started writing her. I remembered how, all my life when I lived with my parents, my mother would receive a weekly letter from her sister who lived in North Carolina. Aunt Margaret would send a single-spaced, type-written letter (usually typed on both sides of the paper) EVERY WEEK!

I've been trying to do the same. Every Sunday I sit down and recount my week for her. I try to throw in something of local interest, or some cultural reference or something more than a dry recitation of activities. Acautally, it's fun. I enjoy remmebering the highs and lows of my week. When something happens, I'll think, "I have to remember to write that to Mother"

But if there is a downside, it is that I feel less comuplsion to write here. I AM sharing myself, with my mother on a weekly basis.

So, why am I writing this now? I called her today and told her I would not write to her this week. I'm going to visit her in person instead. She forgave me for not writing.

I got over by blog-block

I have an outlet for expressing the mundane in my life now. It's called Mom.