Hello, Again

Well hello!  I know it’s been a long time , but I have so much to tell you.

Last blog was about the dear lady at the Department of Labor who was so helpful to me in getting the COBRA reduction for my insurance.  Now I’m about to run out of COBRA altogether and looking to get insurance again and that’s no cheap prospect either.  About $880.00 a month I don’t have.  Could be back to the work force for me in some limited capacity.  I’m not crossing over there until more consideration.

Since I haven’t corresponded in a while you don’t know I had back surgery and I’m as much recovered from that as possible.  I’ve done months of water exercise in a pool and now I’m looking  forward to getting back in the lake.  It has been beautiful here lately and I’m sure the water is going to be tolerable soon.  My friend Jean and I got some swim belts and some support seats for the water for walking and exercising , so my anticipation level is quite high.  The only thing I’m going to miss about the pool was the nice bar it had that I liked to curl my feet around to do water sit-ups.

I’ve got poetry meeting tomorrow night and a little Melrose “Lake Wobegone’ meeting before that.  Poetry has settled into the same group of people showing up most nights.  It’s  hard to know how much they are really interested in poetry because I’m not seeing much progress.  Maybe it’s just me!  I know when we try to incorporate a concept or rule it sure makes it a lot harder to come up with something you’re not embarrassed to read.  We tried Haikus last meeting.  I don’t know what we’ll discuss this time, maybe rhyme.  I am not the person in charge.  This group was going long before I showed up and they seem to enjoy just getting together.   The gathering spot is congenial and easy to get to so that adds to the overall social effect but a moderator keeps things moving along and tosses out words for us to use as inspiration for our poems.  So we write about 5 poems a night and read them aloud.  But there is no criticism of the poems.  I think some constructive criticism would be good.  Unfortunately, before we can do that we need to learn more about the good elements of poetry and how to use them effectively.

I’ve been to two family weddings so far this year, an extraordinary feat for us.  We go for so long without a real reason to dress up out here in the country and them BAM! Two weddings in a month!  Amazing.  Well it’s all good!  I think reunions in general are a good thing and I’ve been trying to effect as many as I can.

I’ve recently reunited, electronically at least, with cousins I haven’t seen in 50 years.  I also have made contact with members of my grandmother’s family I’ve never met!  I have really enjoyed the little glimpse I’ve gotten of their lives and I hope to get to know them better.

Next post:  a poem