Can I come, J G! :):):):)

OOOOO, I can’t begin to choose. Love all the things I live with, use and share every day — things I have collected from the days of Sweet 16. They all seem to fit together so well. It’s nice to live in a world, no matter how small, with things you love and consider friends. Oh, not to forget Elly Babe, my NEW black Mitsubishi Eclipse — so fun to drive. Or Emmy de Grouchy Himalayan, although don’t think I can really claim her as one of my possession since she seems to feel I’m hers. Happiness, Fun and Joy — to the World! Nuthin like being extra curricular self-satisfied now, is there?

O U C H! Don’t believe everything your mother tells or taught you, Daphne. Take a closer look at the world as you might find it if you do look. There are many worlds out there, pick one and build on it. Sit down and list all of your assets — personal and physical. Then BELIEVE in yourself! Above all, NEVER have this converssation with your mother again. She seems too be coming at life, at least YOUR life, from a very negative, unhappy point-of-view. Obviously, she doesn’t know everything, maybe missed the boat. Good luck and best wishes for the happy life thata’s out there. Therapy is a great idea.

I find myself using a lot of my Mother’s funny/corny expressions as I grow older. But she was 5’2”, top weight 98 pounds. I’m 5’8, take after my 6’2” dad, and need to lose 20 pounds. My mother entered nursing school in the late ’20s, when she was seventeen. She was exceedingly good at nursing and worked for a top physician in Beverly Hills and Hollywood whose patients were mostly movie stars and wealthy people. She told me about one of her experiences: the patient was a very wealthy man, used to running the show and having his way in all things. He was recuperating, a grouchy time for many people, especially men. On this particular evening, after dinner, my mother did everything possible to make her patient comfortable, then she sat down to read the newspaper. He noticed she was doing “nothing” for him at the moment and was quite rude about it. My tiny, very fiesty, Irish mother’s response: “I get paid for what I know, not for what I do”. She also told me that nurses at that time were required to back out of the room if there was a doctor present. It was a Catholic hospital. Think things are a bit better now. One of the things I most appreciate about my mother is that she taught me — and my daughter — to love beautiful things. I’ve enjoyed that quality in myself, my life and in my own child. My Mom was very intelligent, very fey and very much afraid of the big wide world. My Dad was killed in automobile accident when I was four, so all the responsibility fell to her. She was definitely not up to it. Her solution: she worked seven days a week, month after month and put me in a boarding school. I didn’t see too much of her. It took me 20 years to unlearn the fear my mother taught me and another 20 to rebuild myself into something more useful and pleasing to myself. It took me another 20 years to realize that Maggie had done the very best she could. I think all mothers do that, even though sometimes it really isn’t very good at all. Hard lesson to learn and acknowledge. Maggie was a great grandmother; spoiled my children something awful.

Appreciate you BIG TIME, Lily.

Good one, Liz! Although when I first heard that BW had mentioned a liason in her book, I thought it would be Castro. I saw BW interview Castro years ago and the ‘right chemistry’ sparks seemed to pop between them. Luv your WOWOWOW site, thanx for putting it together.

Thanx, Bug. TBI stuff is kind of a long haul. BE SURE TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES. It is really easy to forget to do that and then all hell breaks loose and Mother Nature ses — “hey you! and starts throwing darts.” Not good. Good luck to all of you, especially your youngun.

I love the Olympics, got to carry the torch in 1996. Since I would never be an Olympic level athlete, barely an athlete at all — I like to drive, type and swim — it was a great way to participate. As to China, I was surprized when they were awarded the Olympic games in the first place. But I also have mixed feelings about it. It might be an opportunity to give China incentive to change some of her ways, as they have to some extent in response to the Tibet situation. It could also turn out to be a big mistake. But, along those lines, I think we have little national behaviour with which to criticize. China. Although, perhaps, we could get them to keep George for the rest of his term; possibly he could help them with a little ‘democracy’. But since the dye is cast and the games are there, I’m hoping for some really positive outcome. GO ATHLETES!

Bush said he was going as an individual and not as a leader of (pardon the expression) “Free world”. Lordy I did not believe that man could go any lower than he has already done — but, alas, he found another way to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Do you suppose he is thinking of paying China back with BUSH money? Now that’s a good idea! Hang on America, it’s gonna be several rough years, I think.

I spent the ’60s trying to hang onto my bucking bronco of a 13 year old kid in San Francisco’s music scene. Took me two years to calm him down. Actually, he calmed himself down by deciding he wanted to be a drummer. Once he had a goal, he went like a big wind. Could that be because he was conceived in a tornado —- always wondered about that. After that he was an angel to be proud of. THEN, my daughter, one year younger than her brother, took off. She was on for 24 hours a day, sat waiting for me to get home from work demanding this and demanding that. Took her years to get over it. But, now she understands, having just gone through her own 13 year old. Can’t help laughing. But now our relationship is great. Just took awhile. BIG SMILES!

Ur, Liz, so you’re one a doze. :):):):) — the last one — gittin somebody else to do it for you.. FOR TSK! Ideas without a shoulder are useless.

Oh my goodness, Cynthia. That sounds like it was awful. I, too, get a little sick of: Positive to the nth degree; don’t upset the paying customers. A beautiful horse — just plain sad.

P.S. Never mind about your extravagence of toes, Joan. Put a ruby on one of them, or a blue velvet ribbon. Or, you could also sprinkle them with silver angel dust and become Ms. Twinkle Toes of the party.

I love shoes, but can’t really wear high heels anymore. Have a ‘crabby knee’ that had a fight with a canoe years ago. Of course, the canoe won, and now that demmed knee has decided to get down to some arthritic bone on bone — little snot — which really messes up my life of shoes and fashion. Marin County, is fairly casual. Can even verge on ‘extreme laid-back’ in some places, like Fairfax, where we live. I’m not that laid back by nature, but have noticed that I seem to succumb more and more every year. Marin, in a way, is still part country: We seem to have the best of two worlds — three-fourths country and two-thirds City — and you get to choose your spot on any given day or slide up and down if you wish. Makes for an interesting array of people. And we do, indeed, have an interesting array of people. Bill Clinton came to speak at our Speaker’s Bureau. We have a great Speaker’s Bureau, too. I was sitting next to a man way at the top of the auditorium. The place was jammed; we were lucky to have a seat. Anyway, I’m curious, so I talk to people. This guy was writing fastly and furiously even before Clinton started to speak, so my curiousity was pretty close to the top of her ‘perk’. The man had said that he was from back East. Had to wonder what he was doing on the West Coast listening to Bill Clinton. He said he followed Clinton. Oh, okay! Then the speech began. No more talk! The next month I opened my copy of ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ to find this rather picayunish attack about Clinton and the place where he spoke. The article was written by P. J. O’Rourke. It didn’t take much to realize that I had been sitting next to Mr. O’Rouke, himself, at the speech. I wrote a remarkably (in my view) contained LTE to ‘The Atlantic Monthly’, complaining about Mr. O’Rourke and his tainted view of the world, which they never printed. So if anyone here knows P. J. O’Rouke would you please tell him that there’s a lady in Marin County who is still tikked at his outrageous take on Marin in his article. His main complaint: this group, unnamed, in this place, unnamed, didn’t even know how to dress when they came to hear a former president of the United States speak. Granted, none of the men wore suits and the women were mostly wearing casual dressy outfits. But tis most unfortunate Mr. O’Rourke only knows how to make shallow judgments. I knew a lot of the people there (one of the things I like about Marin is you are constantly running into people you know) and all the people I saw were people making things happen, making a difference in ever so many directions — locally, nationally and internationally. Too bad, P. J. runs around with such limited vision, but I guess ‘picayunish is his stock in trade. That warped opinion of Marin and her people, however, didn’t seem to stop him from stopping by when he was trying to sell his last book. TSK! TSK!

I agree with Mugsy and you other cautious folks. I use Quicken and my computer to do our accounting — BUT NEVER ONLINE, like never on Sunday ur sumthin. Drives me crazy when businesses ask for my Social Security number. That’s preposterous and dangerous. I fussed when that all started quite awhile ago, and I was right. Ain’t RIGHT, business just lazy. Government should not allow it. It needs to stop! Anyone else feel that way? P.S. I like to balance my check book to the penny, too. For me, though, it is most often a hard won accomplishment. Computer does such nutty things. Just don’t understand how that happens? :):):):)