Microsoft: Here...let's learn a new language. It'll be fun!

Me: Cool! I'm game! Let's learn a new language!!! I love languages!

(tick tock, tick tock)

Microsoft: How ya' doin'? Are you learning?

Me: Oh, yeah! Wow...this is really amazing. It does a lot for me. I think maybe if you you tweaked this and adjusted that, it could work even better. Whaddya think? You up for that?

Oy! Ok, here's what happens when you only use hand held devices to access the Internet, write every blog post, use myriad apps, and check your e-mails. Those e-mails don't go away on their own. And I have a VERY bad habit of just reading them and closing them without deleting them. I decided to get out my new(er) computer yesterday and realized I haven't updated Windows since last April. I never use this computer, although I should because it is the new one. And you wanna know why I don't use it? Because, there's a glitch in Word 2013 and that's the program I use for writing my book and instead of being patient and trying to fix the problem, I get frustrated, shut it down, and go back to my old laptop. Which is getting full. And old. And obsolete. And slow. So yesterday, I decided I'm bigger than that. I can put in the time necessary to get this thing up to speed. Yeah...right!

Last night was "Pub Church". There is an increasing interest in alternatives to the traditional churches of today. Many have become disenchanted with formal churches and the strong religious rhetoric involved yet they still yearn for a connection of faith. I know from personal experience how the preaching of "hellfire and brimstone" sent me fleeing the church at the tender age of seven. We are a diverse group. For some, this is their only exposure to religion. But for most, myself included, it is an adjunct to regular church attendance and offers a more informal venue for discussion and debate.

We're 18. The only problem is, you can't see that 18 year old because she's stuck inside this 62 year old body. She's in there...though I have to admit, there are days when she does a darned good job of hiding. And...speaking of hiding, she's got a wicked sense of humor because she's always hiding things from me. She's particularly fond of hiding my glasses and my car keys, although she HAS been known to hide the whole danged CAR from me after I've taken her on one of her favorite outings....shopping at the mall. Oh, she LOVES that! She keeps trying to squeeze my butt into HER size jeans and that either makes me laugh or makes me cry or pisses me off. It depends where we are with our hormones. Sigh.

I have lived a lot of lives. I grew up with just enough. A pound of hamburger fed four people. The garden out back gave us the rest. We wore hand-me-downs and were tickled to death with the cast off toys of other kids. We were clean, neat, and used our best manners. A lot of what we had was provided by the kindness of others though I was not aware of that at the time. I never felt poor.

In the moment after Mr. Virgo died, I had no grasp of what had just happened. I mean, one minute we're talking and laughing in the camper, discussing its merits and the next, he was on the floor, uncommunicative. We quickly went from floor to gurney to ambulance to ER to Cardiac Cath Lab to...dead. One hundred eighty minutes, tops. In my shock, I couldn't grasp where he had gone. The sensation that he had just gone shopping without me and he'd be back any minute really stuck with me for awhile. Or, maybe he was at work. Or he went to get his hair cut. But, there came that fateful day when I had to put away all the fantasy and accept he was gone. And he wasn't coming back.

When I was on my three month odyssey in little TOW-Wanda, I had nothing but time and space before me. I had freedom from employment and family obligations. I drove where I wanted, slept when I wanted, and ate what I wanted. I literally laid back in the stream of life and let it take me with it. It was an intense period of purging grief that not everyone gets to experience. And in just that short period of time, I had so many revelations....about God and the Universe, about love and loss, about life and finding the courage to move on through the rest of it without the man I loved more than anything. And, since I think in analogies, let me share an insight with you.

Is It Spring Yet? Oh...it's WAY too early to be asking that question, isn't it? I am so grateful the last two days looked like this. And warm??? Oh, my! It got up to the high 50's yesterday. I can take winter much better if we get days like this interspersed with the gray, gloomy ones. Winter can make me feel old. One of my fellow Sister glamping friends on FB just started training to walk the Pacific Rim Trail. I'm like, "I can make a trail from my couch to my fridge to my bed, thank you very much!" I know I'm needing some exercise when it takes multiple attempts to hoist myself out of a low slung chair. Oh, I'm not all that bad, really...but when I eat at 4:30 and call it dinner, it makes me feel older than my age. I want to crawl into bed at 6:00 and read till midnight. I know winter is designed to make us rest as the world rests. Rest is one thing. Crawling in a hole and pulling it in after you is something altogether different. Must....resist....the urge....to hibernate!!!

I love a full moon. It's full of mystery and promise. I am a creature of the light so when it's a clear night and there's a full moon, especially after a snow, the world has an ethereal glow...an other-worldly spirit...and I am enamored.

I see moonrise far more often than sunrise. I'm just not a morning person. There is an optical illusion when the moon rises, making it appear huge when it's near the horizon. I will never forget the first time I saw a moonrise over Denver as I was cresting the hill at Genesee on I-70. It was October, a harvest moon. A friend had taken me to Vail for dinner and we were driving back. We came around a bend and I swear, the moon filled the sky! I made him stop the car and I cried at the perfection of it all. I am touched by the beauty of nature.

I should never, ever attempt to "go to bed at a decent hour". It never really works out for me. It doesn't matter what time I go to sleep...I'm wide awake three, maybe four hours later, ready to plow the south forty, and most people won't be getting up for another four hours, at least. There are few people to talk to at 2:30am. So, I'm reduced to surfing the web eating ice cream and writing about it. And you, my dear devoted readers, are placed in the enviable position of sitting back with your morning cuppa Joe and joining me on a little romp through internet history.