The simplest way of changing fiction to fact - change the pronoun and the name...obviously.

As she sits here...writing on school paper...eating bridge mixture... drinking Cinzano...thumbing her nose at her nutritionist who left a message to phone which she is ignoring because she knows the nutritionist is going away for a week...she wonders who best deserves her first letter of the year...it is a toss up...there are many deserving souls...perhaps she could make it a form letter! Let the word processor begin! You won the toss...the rest will get a copy with the name changed...crossed out! Actually you might want the names and addresses of the other recipients...between the lot of you...you could decipher what has happened to Sally.

Three points to be made:
I watch television. I am not ashamed. From the day I saw the coronation of the Queen in black and white, I have watched television. I saw a beautiful clip the other day. Somewhere in England a ballet company is building a new space. The floor has to be spring loaded. The construction workers became fascinated in the process and were so involved that they decided half as a lark and half seriously to take some lessons and do a charity show. The clip was of the teacher showing them the basic moves as they understood the dynamics of the floor. They were skeptical but they were not mocking the process.
At St. John the Devine they had a blessing of the animals. We're not talking just family pets...we're talking exotic animals. When the priest was asked how they handle the situation, he responded, "We place them in order of who won't eat whom!
And finally my friend Sheila's comment at the end of a particularly challenging day: "Another day, another pile of dust."

Old age is fraught with challenges. One has to give up control of the body, of the living situation...Children finally get to dictate the order they have been trying to impose from the moment they became adults. However, there is a certain freedom attached to old age. One can say what one thinks. My friend was out walking with her mom when they met a small dog. After making the appropriate fuss, she turned to my friend and said, "That's a why bother dog!"

My mom had difficulty with the presence of my grandmother.

She had lived with us and cared for us for so long that my mother worried about not caring for her. Long after my grandmother died, my mother looked for her. And so I put up a sign in her living room, "Grannie is dead." It worked. She said that whenever she got that feeling, she just looked at the sign.

A friend told me at one point that his mother worried about what had happened to her house. I told him about the sign and so he put up a sign: "The house is sold...and grannie's dead." He did the latter to honor my sign. One day he visited his mom and asked her if she felt better about the house. "Oh yes," she said. "The house is sold." And then she hesitated..."But I didn't know grannie was dead."

Even we who are retired respect the sanctity of the weekend. Even if we have puttered all week, we still reserve some puttering for the weekend. Puttering produced this picture which I had forgotten about and which I think is rather neat. It was taken in Manning Park. My friend and I disagreed about the hummming sound...she thought it was an owl. I was pretty sure it was a bear. Fortunately we had no opportunity to verify our speculations! I'm pretty sure it was a bear. Owls don't hummm. In any case, we were privileged to be there.

I was right! No more flitter brain!

I'm suffering from flitter brain! It all started when I tried to take a picture of two poodles and a friend. They all gave up...but really I was trying to remember where I put the forty rolls of toilet paper I had bought...I didn't need it but it was symbolic. If I could lose 40 rolls of toilet paper and not get a decent poodle picture, then I was in trouble...I figured that if I found the 40 rolls of toilet paper that would put everything back into order.

Then I would write a note to myself to tell me where they were...and voila! No more flitter brain!

There's nothing like going up a mountain to get a brilliant idea...as long as one can remember the idea when one gets down the mountain. I was asked to show my photos...which delighted me...until I was asked to show my animal photos...but I really like my flower photos...and thanks to the mountain...I have found the perfect compromise...and I even remembered the idea when I got home!

The day that nothing went right: That was the way it happened. The little boy dropped the rubber ball and the world ended.