To Be Perfectly Honest

Hi Friends, neighbors, relatives, and whoever...sorry I could not enter a blog for yesterday; I tried playing golf for the first time in several weeks. It was my usual Wednesday "Dogfight" whereby each golfer in the tournament shells out five dollars for the pot and then has to make a certain number of points above his handicap in order to win some money. Birdies are 4 pts., pars are 2 pts., and bogeys are 1pt. If you score two strokes above par on any hole you get no points. So the guy who scores the most points above his handicap can win $$$. So, happens that I was "Plus 6" over my handicap and I got $15 for second place. The winner was +7. If you don't understand golf, I'm sorry you had to read this paragraph. Start over with the next one.

So, on with my apology; I said I "tried" to play, meaning that I wanted to see if I could finish 18 holes without pain in my legs and shortness of breath. The last time I played, I had to quit after 8 holes because of those problems. But this time it was much cooler weather and I gutted it out. However, I did not have the requisite energy to sit down and write a blog. So Rho and I went to a movie at the clubhouse. It was a foreign film set in East Germany titled "The Lives of Others," telling the story of how the Stasi (secret police) kept records and spied on any of its citizens it suspected of having sympathy or ties with the West. The good thing about it was that it had English subtitles so I did not have to wear any hearing aid devices.
It was so easy to follow the action that I have considered the possibility of only going to see foreign films for the rest of my life.

When I got back to the apartment and tuned into my e-mail I was startled by my daughter, Robin's news that she had teamed up with her lifelong friend, Riza, to buy a 325 acre ranch in Montana. Attached to this email were about 25 pictures of the place. I did not see any sheep, cows, chickens, horses, goats, pigs, or buffalo on the spread. So, I don't know how money is to be made in this investment unless they secretly discovered oil on the place. And besides, I don't know how two Jewish girls from Long Island can wind up being ranch hands in the wild, wild West. So, in spite of my reservations (no pun intended), I wish them the best of luck. I know I'm not the one who's going to be mowing 325 acres or shoveling up cow dung. While I was at my cardiologist's office today for a pacemaker check I saw on the TV they had a commercial that said there were 40 acres in Wyoming selling for $2000 an acre. I thought about the cost of 325 acres and decided I couldn't afford it.

Along with Robin's news, another email from a literary agency to whom I sent a sample of one of my poems, asked me to send them 3 more so their editors could judge whether a book of my poems could sell in the marketplace. Of course I already published my poems, but I was the "publisher". Lulu was a very convenient online place for someone to get their work published without having to pay money up front. To be perfectly honest, I just paid the printing costs for each book I ordered. Since those costs were expensive I only ordered copies for my children and a couple of other relatives. My primary aim was to get 13 months of hard work trying to remember as many events as I could (at my age) onto book form. I always wanted to write a book, but was not satisfied to have it come out of my PC printer and into a 3 hole notebook. And the book that I received was just unbelievably rewarding just to hold it in my hand and know that I accomplished something for my family and future great grandkids...if any! To continue being perfectly honest, I still own all the rights to my work and if an agent wants to put some of it out there in the market, it's OK by me, but I'm not going to pay them a dime. And now off to Costco to buy some gefilte fish for Rosh Hashanah and 7 guests.