Bubba the WonderCat wouldn’t even lower himself to look at the pictures.

My sister used to "ooh & ahhh" over pet costumes at Target at Halloween, & once, urged me to buy them for my posse.  I said I would under one condition: she dress the cats.

That was the end of that idea.

I was engaged to a guy who wanted to give me a ring.  I don’t care for diamonds, & convinced him to have a new furnace installed in my house instead.  My house is old, the wiring was inadequate.  I went out of town to visit my brother, & came home to new wiring as well as a furnace.  When I decided I could no longer tolerate his drinking, & kicked his whiskey-soaked butt to the curb, I got to keep my engagement present!

"I Believe in Miracles" by The Ramones

 "I believe in a better world for me and you".

Now I can say "I told you so!"  to the people who argued that my old biker jacket would never, ever be in style again & I had to purge it from the back of the closet it’s been lurking in.

I’ve been going through closets, drawers, etc. to get rid of stuff.  I see I have to rescue some old big-bead necklaces from the tzedakah boxes.

"Stuck in the Tunnel"  (subtitled: "No Where Near the Light at the End of It".

Tovah Feldshuh would play me.  She’s fantastic!

I, too,  saw Christine Lahti & thought she looked familiar but couldn’t quite pin her identity down.  What a great change over the nicey-nicey ADAs L&O has had so far.  I see fireworks & much head-butting in future episodes.

After Capt. "Sully" landed his crippled plane in the Hudson & ferries were steered over to provide assistance to the passengers, Rachel Maddow said that she had to honor New Yorkers; they always run towards trouble to help out.

I was in NYC as a child, my family "did" the Statue of Liberty & the Empire State Building, then fled back to the safety of our campground in Pennsylvania. Sadly, I’m another who had the idea that NYC isn’t at all safe, especially for women alone.  This from someone who’s wandered London at all hours of the day & night, & during a trip to Poland, spent several days roaming Gdansk, my chest bristling with every union button I could beg, borrow, or steal from coworkers, looking for a Solidornosz demonstration to participate in (rolls eyes).  Thanks much to New Yorker & Marilyn Buchanan; you’ve eased my fears about a future stay in NYC to study Yiddish at NYU.

In the spring/early summer, before the weather gets hot, I haul out my divided meal "keepers" (the Rubbermaid/Tupperware ones with three compartments).  I steam fresh veggies (or use frozen), roast a chicken, bake some fish, & make some whole wheat pasta/brown rice.  I make my own "TV dinners" & freeze them.

When the weather gets hot & I don’t want another salad/sandwich but it’s too hot to cook (& for whatever reason, I don’t want to go out to eat), I have a nice meal of the kind of food I want.  I don’t care for store-bought TV dinners; most have too much salt, & rarely have enough veggies.

I am in the process of downsizing.  I want to retire soon, & aim to minimize my expenses.  My house is~ & always has been~ too big for me.  I have three bedrooms; I sleep in one & the others are full of stuff I’ve kept simply because I have a place to put it.

I am on a medical leave of absense to recover from knee replacement surgery, so I’m limited as to the amount of physical work I can do.  But it easy to sit around, sorting through stuff.  My current goal is to jettison at least a third of my thousands of books, & half my extensive wardrobe.  As I sort, I lecture myself about how much fatter my savings account would be if I hadn’t bought ‘catch me, catch me’ shoes for "just in case", an expensive astrology book when I haven’t cast a chart in over a decade, etc.

 I don’t need all this stuff; there is no reason for me to keep it.

I’m another "raised Catholic" who left the Church.  Years ago, I decided that Catholicism wasn’t for me & started to explore other religions. 

The first time I walked into a synagogue, I felt as if I’d gone home.  When I told my mother that I was going to become Jewish was easier because both my parents were converts to Catholicism & mum’s parents went back & forth between Roman & Polish National Catholicism, depending on distances to travel & gas rationing during WWII.  My grandparents were appalled that I bought a house on my own rather than marry & get a husband to buy it for me, but never said a word about my conversion.