Until We Meet Again

After almost six years of Blogging (daily until six weeks ago), I am retiring to spend more time with Tom Brady’s family.

Although not readily apparent, I have learned so much. I was pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed poetry and cooking posts. Blogs featuring photographs, music, and artwork were spectacular. The storytellers touched every emotion. The commentary was fascinating, although I could not agree with it all. I cannot acknowledge everyone who impacted me because I still “type” with one finger and a 300 word limit.

I was disappointed to find people who were funnier than me. I laughed out loud at the jokes, puns, cartoons, and controversies over “likes” and statistics. I did not participate in the challenges because I cannot tell the difference between a pingback and a ping pong ball but I enjoyed the creative responses.

I was frustrated I could not post some stories that belong partially to other people. Perhaps the passage of time will eventually allow for respectfully negotiated privacy intrusions in some other venue. I am not qualified to give advice but endorse the views of those who advocate quality over quantity. I leaned into quantity only because it was easier than carefully crafting, editing, and eliminating redundancies. But I was truly impressed by those who produced quality original content, and of course, by those with the courage to pour their lives on the page and inspire others with encouragement and lessons learned.

I genuinely appreciate anyone who visited, read, skimmed, did not read, liked, secretly disliked, commented, and/or followed me. So I basically loved you all, except maybe not the bots because, well, they are only bots. Still they are more amusing and less annoying than flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. Right? 😎

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Part II. Guest Post

Continuation of yesterday’s excerpted 2009 tweets from my late brother Kevin’s Twitter account:

8/04: Putting a couple dozen yards of my poetry up for sale on eBay.

8/05: Getting my hair to dry in the shape of a dwarf platypus.

8/07: Posting my cell phone numbers for the whole world to see: 2,3,4,5,6,7, two nines, and two zeroes.

8/09: Putting away the Blue Angels outfit for another year.

8/10: Planting a row of miniature marshmallows in the lower garden.

8/11: Creating algorithm for putting down the toilet seat in a two-boy/two-girl household with standard habits.

8/12: Calling Twitter’s bluff on the capricious 140-character limit (which is impossible to enforce anyway since millions of users will simply ign

8/17: Picking up Kevlar garbage bags from my sailmaker.

8/18: Habituating to scrabbling squirrels in the ductwork.

8/19: Leaving my identity out in the hopes someone will steal it.

8/21: Rummaging around for “Latin for Travelers” guidebook in advance of big trip to Lutetia.

8/25: Preparing book proposal for “Dead-Animal-Smell-in-the-House Diet.”

8/26: Sensing toothpicks have it really bad: maybe worse than plungers.

8/27: Steering with my knees to protest cell phone driving rules.

8/28: Squeezing laptop, printer, three-hole punch and small copy machine on seriously under-designed Starbucks table.

8/31: Slipping neighbor’s lawn furniture into garage sale inventory.

9/04: Having trouble finding the Nanotechnology Building.

9/07: Patenting bar of soap with a pointed end for those hard-to-reach spots.

9/15: Marveling that spouse didn’t notice I was speaking-in-tongues during last night’s big argument.

9/22: Wondering who you have to know to score one of those Genius Grants.

9/28: Patting myself on the back for being in a rut where I can go faster and not swerve around.

10/22: Applying for pundit jobs.

11/03: Raising bail money for Impersonating a Vegetarian charge.

Part I. Guest Post

My late brother Kevin had nine followers on Twitter. Excerpted tweets from 2009:

6/12: Bench pressing 275 pounds

6/13: Waiting for Obama to return my call.

6/14: Imagining improbable couplings.

6/15: Getting ready for strawberry-picking field trip with my Empathy class.

6/16: Reading Proust with one hand tied behind my back.

6/17: Reorganizing the wine cellar.

6/18: Having my doubts.

6/19: Researching website concepts for Halibut for Humanity.

6/20: Rotating taillights

6/22: Chafing under Tour de France steroid regulations.

6/23: Taking the road to Hawi.

6/27: Moonwalking.

6/28: Sorting a can of mixed nuts.

6/29: Tuning the oboe.

7/01: Sharpening my spatial skills.

7/03: Seamlessly slipping my word-of-the-day, susurrus, into conversations.

7/07: Lobbying Hawaiians to add at least one more letter to their alphabet.

7/08: Caving to pressure from the kids for playdates with Sasha and Melia.

7/14: Working on “Hefeweizen” with speech therapist.

7/15: Getting coffee cup handle to stop at the front of the microwave.

7/16: Daydreaming about existentialism.

7/20: Constructing a giant gorilla out of coat hangers.

7/21: Decoding the clues planted in “Suicide Squeeze.”

7/22: Regretting giving the kids tomato paste for their art project.

7/23: Setting clocks back to Standard Time so I don’t have to worry about it in November.

7/24: Experimenting with trombone adhesives in the basement.

7/26: Getting refill on placebos.

7/27: Inventing small, adhesive-backed squares of paper that you can write on and stick anywhere.

7/28: Marshalling documents that prove I was born in the United States.

7/30: Deducing that a warm and personal invitation to the Summer Rock ‘n Roll Party is, in fact, a clever form letter.

8/01: Friending near-strangers because of approaching birthday.

8/03: Pitching investors on “Feel the Burn,” a combined aerobics studio and cigarette shop.”

Another Job I Lost

The day after St. Patrick’s Day is usually my most embarrassing time of the year. When I am dressed all in wrinkled green on the day after, everybody knows I slept in my clothes. The fact that I Blog about it confirms my perverse Negative Attention Disorder.

I began taking my youngest grandchild Zofia to preschool at age two when the other three adults in the household were employed outside of the home. One day when I dropped her off, her teacher remarked that Zofia was wearing the same outfit as yesterday. I had not been paying attention because it was hard enough to get her fed and dressed in time for school. From our reactions, the teacher recognized that she was reprimanding us and quickly added how much she loved the outfit. I tried to make sure Zofia’s face was clean and that her clothes were not filthy but she refused to let me comb her hair. And she always looked better than me.

In Kindergarten, Zofia hated fabric touching her skin, so she would roll the stretchy pants or tights up above her knee. She was popular, so other girls started imitating her and I would be cringing and hiding when mothers were picking up their daughters after school.

In September at the beginning of Fourth Grade, she wore her father’s XXL polo shirt as a dress. When I blogged about it, I regretted not having the technical skills to post photos. One of my few rules has been that she wear some kind of shorts under a dress. Needless to say, I am no longer in charge of taking Zofia to school in the morning.

Jelly Bean Soufflé

I have finally evicted that Lemmingolian squatter from my site which was abandoned without safeguards. He is happily peddling his 100 Things all over the Universe. My lawyer advises me to post a few items and then shut down properly. So I am going to reminisce about the roundly delicious tradition of Easter Pi. We serve Egg Pi and Jelly Bean Pi at our brunches. Others prefer Peep Pi, sometimes known by the scientific shorthand 3.14. My eleven year old grandson Diego specializes in Cutie Pi and can bake it out to fifty digits. He recently demonstrated that talent to me right before his 14 year old sister arrived home. When she walked in, I asked Noemi if she knew what Pi was. When she responded, “3.14,” the room erupted with laughter. To me, the best Pi is 3.14159. I have long used those six digits as my universal password but that left brained Lem unscrambled the code in less time than it takes to poach an egg. So I have now updated my security with the unbreakable passcode of the last six digits of Pi.

18. One Hundred Things

I could not get a job on Earth due to legal impediments and my lack of skills. So I am now a franchise owner for One Hundred Things, conducting classes at senior citizen centers and self help seminars. Attendees create a list of one hundred things they have done in life, captured as one liners. This is not intended as a resume of accomplishments, although certainly some of those would make the list. The compilation is designed to reflect all aspects of a life uniquely yours. An item could be simple but evocative (I was a Girl Scout).

In the case of my anonymous client [delete Stamper], he added failures (flunked high school Chemistry), travel (he witnessed the baptism of two grandchildren in El Salvador), events (he and his wife attended a Super Bowl in Dallas), lies (he was a popular Blogger for almost six years), employment (he worked as a Plumber’s Aid on the night shift), sports (he was cut from the high school track team on the first day of practice his Freshman year), and medical (his appendix burst). I teach techniques like compound sentences to get extra items (his appendix burst and his organ donation was rejected). This makes room for future events (he plans to save orphans from a burning building).

The 100 Things can be in random order or sorted chronologically, alphabetically, or by importance. They can be written in Haiku format or without vowels. When you go through the process, you cannot help but reflect on life in a way that affirms you were here and really lived. The process is cathartic and can serve as a rough draft for your eulogy and obituary. Try it. It should be more interesting than reading this post.