B.L.O.G.

I woke up yesterday and realized that I really have nothing to do all day; but I don’t mind having nothing to do all day.  Of course, I can find things to do, all kind of things to do to keep me busy; but do I really want that? I think not... My daughter Isabelle said, “Mom, you are like a raft floating down the Mississippi River, sometimes it is fast, sometimes it is slow.”  That is a good analogy.  I am retired now; I had just spent almost two months in France and Luxemburg and had a blast.  I am home and very happy to be home doing nothing... Today is a good day.  Tomorrow is tomorrow.  The future? Who cares!!! I am a raft floating down the Mississippi River and I don’t care where it is going to take me.  I am living and enjoying whatever life I have left in me to the fullest.  If it is doing nothing, then it is doing nothing... October 2010? Not sure, but I will probably be in France attending a Mauritanian R...

Monic (Chounramani) Kraft and Laure (Souvannavong-Drouot) Chessin I was in France and Luxemburg having a good old time.  I drove so much.  I was constantly on the road visiting someone somewhere.  When I took the car back to the airport, the woman at the desk said, “You drove a lot.”  Hello? Isn’t that what I was supposed to do, drive? I guess she is not used to seeing over 10 thousand kilometers driven in a month and a half.  It is France, after all. I hooked up with friends I had not seen in ages.  When I said in ages, I really mean in ages like as far back as 1972.  I went to Normandy to meet my childhood friend Monic.  We were teenagers, growing up in Laos together.  She was eighteen when she married Ken and left.  I was devastated to see my one and only friend leaving me behind.  As soon as she was gone, I resigned from the Colombo Plan Hospital where we were both working as nurses.  Eventually, I married Barnet...

Unfinished Statue... (Written in March of 2010) It was one of those long days in Antananarive that became one of those nights… I was tired and I went to bed early.  The phone rang, and it was a long lost friend calling from France.  They had no idea that I was already in lala land dreaming about being home, in Spotsylvania.  After we talked, I tried to go back to sleep, but sleep evaded me.  I left my bed; I walked out on the balcony, sat in the cold misty Malagasy air with an Air France blanket wrapped around my body.  I watched the faraway lights, and thinking to myself, "There is life out there", and I wondered what they were doing and what they were thinking.  As I walked back, my reflection in the mirror on the wall knocked my soul out of its socket, and I looked at myself for the first time in forty years, really looked at myself. I was wearing a white old lace convent-type granny nightgown.  Not only did I look dumpy, frumpy, but my grayish ...