Concerning Correspondence

They are taking bets in Middle Earth. Will I really be able to go a week without e-mail on my trip? I say yes, confidently. A couple of skeptics say no way. I hark back to those days when I thought computers were for people out in Research Triangle Park calculating the fish levels at Falls Lake. I didn't know about e-mail. After I learned how, the first person I e-mailed was my neighbor who after two days, slipped the address of his brother, (who might be able to keep up with my volume), under my door. Pretty soon, Second Best was giving homework assignments to keep Moi busy and telling her to breathe into a paper bag as she was hyperventilating. Not that I wasn't busy. I was taking care of children, volunteering at the library, assisting an art teacher with grades k-4, dog walking, cat sitting, driving people to doctor visits, and working on that novel which I still claim to be working on. However, there was always a teeny bit of time (thank you, U!)for checking e-mail. It was recommended after Douglas died that I get grief therapy. I called a hypnotherapist and talked to him for 45 minutes about my plight. "My daughter thinks I need help." He said, "You can make an appointment if you like but really you have marvelous coping mechanisms." Yeah, e-mail. I e-mailed him to thank him and received an e-mail reply with a quote from Einstein, natch. E-mailing from Eureka was particularly nice b/c I could "stay up" for the nightowls on the East Coast. Middle Earth today had a perplexed look when I said I was training the cabinet door to stay closed. You see, I have a Theory of Inanimate Objects which includes a kindness clause. Be kinde to the cabinet door and it will be kinde to ye. On that note, I figured it would be impolite to send an e-mail while yawning but in Eureka if I cut off at 11:00 p.m. Eureka time I was still tres Emily Post. I was like my friend, Scott, who never talked on the phone without brushing her teeth first. Her husband had been the "inventor" of the line, "Promise her anything but give her Arpege." As a remembrance of those two fine people, one of the things I do before e-mailing is give myself a good squirt of L'Occitane's Myrrh and Incense so that Recipients will receive something beautiful with echoes of Tunisia. You can tell, can't you? The Blob will be on holiday next week. You might be sent a postcard with whiffs of New York but don't expect the North Carolina e-mail truck. It will be parked in the shade of the dogwood at Bag End waiting for my return.
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.....may the blessings of beautiful things be yours today and through the night, beautiful things like letters and postcards and instant aromatic telepathic messages....