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Thursday March 22, 2001
"Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend he is?." George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
married sixty years
official anniversary dessert
married sixty-two years and some |
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anniversary I wake to a dream about an event. Sort of a salon (not beauty, the other kind, you really need to read every day), but with hundreds or people and conducted at a sports area and with complex 'kits' for participating. And there are lots of dishes. I hate to leave the host with the dishes and am trying to get someone (my mom?) to stay and help. I think my friend from Cape Town is there. Is it her house? Then my brother-in-law is washing dishes and handing them to me to dry but they aren't clean. Then my mother is driving against traffic on a dirt road. I've been rethinking a lot of things lately. How I spend my money, how I spend my time, what things are necessary to keep and what should be ditched. For some reason this has made me think of the Internet. ('Must keep high-speed Internet and computers! Give up digital cable and many other things first.') I actually rely on a couple of portals. Eventually, I think people will pay for WEB services in droves. Not a lot, just a few bucks a month for this or that. But adverstising will still probably offset the cost. Now there is so much stuff that is absolutely free once you jack onto the WEB. Dictionaries, stock info, little movies, databases. I am more addicted to a couple of online journals than anyone is to a network TV show. I promise. Some are sort of free but will give you a little more for some money. A good example is The New York Times. You can see almost everything in the daily paper, work the crossword online (I don't) and search thirty days of articles. But every time you search they offer deeper archive searching for a fee. I still pay (a lot really) to get the Times in the yard every morning. And I enjoy reading it as a newspaper. But one day, I'll probably pay to see it online. Heck, I might even pay for the archives. This future didn't arrive soon enough for some dot coms, did it? My parents anniversary. Not 50. But 60. We took them and FFP's parents (already past their 62nd) to Four Seasons. I love all my parental units but the train moves slowly with four people over 75. (Actually Mom will reach 80 in September making it four over 80.) We have to take the elevator instead of stairs, they have trouble getting into the van and getting seat belts latched, they can't see the menu, they eat slowly. We all enjoy the meal, though. Four Seasons is very, very quiet in the wake of SWSX. Dining room desserted. The couch area in the bar awaits us when we go upstairs. Rebecca plays the 30's and 40's music that marks my parents' youth. I got the rabbit story straight. December 7, 1941. My parents live in a house on his parents' land. There is no electricity but they have a battery-operated radio. They have no meat for dinner and they go out to kill a rabbit. Mom tries to kill one and (she says) 'shoots a gun for the first and last time.' Dad gets one, though. After they dress it, they go inside and turn on the radio. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Inspires Dad to tell another story or two about the house. They used butane to heat and cook. One morning the butane didn't evaporate when they opened the valve and ran out on the floor. He shut it off and went to his parents' house and got the horse. He walked along side and took Mom to the parents. They heated with oil. At lunch, I heard this: "I was the first on my cul-de-sac to get Road Runner. It was really fast. Then my neighbors got it and it slowed down in the evening. We complained and they did something and it's fast again."
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