Shipwrecked & Comatose

Last year I started a new tradition .  I found the idea on  Facebook (Facebook provided a good idea - what a rarity).  Every time a happy event happens, write it down and put it in a jar.  Then at the end of the year, open the jar and gain some perspective on how the year was. I didn’t have a jar, but I had a rustic wooden box I bought at the NY Renaissance Faire years ago.  I now designate it as my storage for memories. 2022 was a rough year.  Our family suffered a devastating loss.  After years of being careful, Kevin and I and a few of our family members succumbed to COVID - right at the start of our vacation no less.  But amidst the loss were some new beginnings.  We also had many good times.  It’s time to look back on the best of the best. That cute wooden box. Was it a bad year?  This is a large pile of papers. January 22   - Malcolm and Steffanie's wedding.  The whole family convened for a fun (although cold) weekend in Boston. February 8th - The family gathered for Eleanor

I have so many posts titled "Random Thoughts" I decided to engage in an exquisite time-waster and number each one so they would each have a unique identifier.  I don't know why I needed to do that, but I now know I have done 28 posts of "Random Thoughts" microblogs. ### Everyone talks about the "drunk uncle" who makes trouble at holidays.  How come I don’t have a drunk uncle?   Am I missing out?  Where can I get a drunk uncle?  It might be nice to spice up holidays a bit. ### Why did children's pop culture abandon aardvarks? When I was a kid  Wonderama  had an aardvark song.   Sesame Street  had an aardvark song.  The books and TV series  Arthur  is about an aardvark (who doesn't resemble an aardvark at all).  Why aren't kids these days amused by aardvarks? ### When I was a kid, if my food was too hot, the adults who were serving it to me would put it in a smaller dish.  I never understood why they did that.  How does a small dish make food

Hello my dear readers, my S&C Muffins.  I am posting a life update today.  Don't be too excited.  I'm not making a major announcement.  I am merely doing some old-fashioned "blah blah blah" blogging in my old style of making blog posts about regular life updates.   I am trying to wean myself off Facebook a bit.  Yes, I know that's an old story with me. I don't plan to delete it or even deactivate it, but I am trying to resist the lure of the scroll.  If I post less, I check it less because I am not looking to see how friends commented or reacted.  I check it if I need to see updates about my offline activities (such as rehearsal videos) or if a friend or family members tells me something I should look at, or if I'm tagged (which happens often during theater season).  As I have said many times before, avoiding Facebook or keeping it to a minimum, keeps me mentally calmer and doesn't feed my addiction to the scroll or need for attention.   That's

  I'm excited to vote on Tuesday.   Is excited the wrong word?  Maybe the word is eager, or anxious, or maybe desperate.  Whatever it is, I know I have to do it.  Maybe I am only one vote out of over a hundred and fifty million, but many snowflakes make a blizzard.  I have to make my voice heard.  I have to do my part.  I feel as if I am making a last ditch attempt to save something irrevocably lost.  I think this is what football players call a Hail Mary pass.   Is this going to work? Worst of all, even if it does work, are there forces out there trying to undo it? What has this country come to? Voting should be as easy as possible.  It is the right and responsibility of every American citizen. It is the cornerstone of democracy.  Nobody should try to stop us from doing our duty.  Yet here we are in the twenty-first century and it seems the government is doing everything it can to suppress the vote using every tactic possible from from ID laws, to gerrymandering, to reducing the n

Of all the things I took for granted that the pandemic took from me, travel ranks high on the list.  I love to travel an d missed exploring the the world when quarantine grounded me.  In August of 2019 I went to Spain with my family and haven’t been abroad since.  The only trips I took were to Chincoteague. That trip is important and I am glad I was still able to go there, but it’s a big country and a big world and I feared falling behind on the bucket list. Now I can fly, and even fly abroad again, but it seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  For example, last winter Kevin and I were thinking of doing a domestic trip and going down south to Charleston and Savannah.  Then the Omicron variant hit and flights were being canceled all over the place.  We decided it was best not to take any vacations where we had to fly in the coming months.  Who knew when the next variant would hit and shutdowns would happen all over again?   Even now quarantines and masks are no longer requ