Dogs and feet--not my best day

My foot surgery yesterday was so painless, I thought I was home free--no pain until I got up in the middle of the night and realized it dinged at me a bit. Today, it hurts to walk--not excruciating, just annoying. Aspirin doesn't seem to help, and I don't want anything stronger.

But last night my old dog, Scooby, kept collapsing when I tried to bring him in. He had no balance, and his legs, especially the back ones, kept giving out. I had to call the pet sitter to come take him to the vet this morning. When I woke at four, I couldn't go back to sleep--sure that the vet would say to put him down. She didn't--she said give it a day or two. She did say since both the dog and I were lame, it would be best if they kept him so we didn't trip each other--a sensible notion. Sometimes these things pass, and he did seem a bit better by the time I left the clinic. Scoob is lounging in the "luxury site" at the vet's, but the report this afternoon was "no better, no worse." I bet he'd rather be home in his own bed, which he loves.  They reported that when they took him out to pee this afternoon, they rigged a sling to keep his back end upright. I'm apprehensive about this. I thought Scooby was eleven-and-a-half, but it turns out I was a  year shy--he'll be thirteen in August. I'd been railing at the gods that he should have a couple of good years left. Now I'm somewhat mollified, but I still don't want to lose him.
Scoob is a gorgeous blue merle Australian shepherd. I got him at three-and-a-half from the Humane Society. He had been abused and has never lost some characteristics of that--the sweetest dog in the world tried serously to bite the vet tech today over rectal temperature-taking. Grabbing hold of his collar scares him, and I have to keep him by me because his house manners are not reliable if I'm not watching. But he has a way of looking at me with adoration that just breaks my heart. This morning, when I was getting ready to leave the clinic, he clearly didn't want to leave my side. Made me teary. We do get so invested in our animals.
Sophie, the puppy who jumps on Scoob's rear end and doesn't help matters at all, doesn't seem to miss him as much as I thought she would. Played outside by herself quite happily for a good portion of the day and is now asleep by me.
My day got a lot better when my brother came to get me for lunch, with his wife and mother-in-law in tow. We met Cindy's sister and her significant other at Carshon's and had a high old time, mostly planning an Alter/Peckham/Azuma reunion for May. Aunt Patty is the one who has taken that particular bull by the horns and done a great job of organizing people, etc. (I'm resisting mixed metaphors or I'd talk about herding cats, which is what getting all those people to agree on a date amounts to.) Today we decided a scavenger hunt for the kids would be great fun--they will range in age from almost two to thirteen. Lots of laughter lifted me out of the doldrums, and tonight I look forward to dinner with my neighbors at the Old Neighborhood Grill.
So, bad, distrubing things, even minor pain, aside, I am blessed with family and friends and oh so grateful.

New Life for Old Books

In the early 1990s, I wanted to break my fiction out into a "big" book, rather than the short fiction I'd been doing for Doubleday's western fiction series. I told then-edtor Greg Tobin I wanted to write a fictional biography of Libbie Custer's years with General George Armstrong Custer. After all, theirs was the "Great Romance of the Western Frontier." Greg coughed, hemmed, hawed and said he'd have to see a hundred pages before he offered a contract. Long story short, it was published and did better than any other book I've published. Not the big breakout book, but nice respectable sales. Of course it went out of print, and in those days who knew to save digital files? Even if I had done so they'd be on a diskette and difficult to access today. So I have paid a company to scan all 300+ pages. Just finished proofing the galleys, and it should be available for e-readers soon.
I suspect I'm as proud of this book as any I've done. I wrote it with Libbie's journals spread out before me, and yet I tried to give her a voice that was real to me, not the public voice she assumed in her zeal to make sure Autie went down in history as a hero. Read an except here http://www.judyalter.com/e-books.
In proofing this book, I was surprised at how much of me there is in Libbie and how much of my attitude toward my marriage, then some ten years in the past. And I was also surprised at the change in my writing style. Libbie is not clumsy, don't get me wrong, and when I began to read it, I thought, "Darn, this is better than I thought." But I also noticed some slight changes in style--I've learned not to repeat similar words too close together; I've learned to avoid what I now think is that awkward construction, "It was then that ...." I've learned to omit unnecessary words to a greater extent.
Don't let me discourage you from reading this. I got some nice comments on Facebook about it, and I still think it's the most human approach to what I see as Libbie's dilemma--marriage to Custer was not al happy romps across the prairie, and I tried to capture that realistically. This is BSP--blatant self-promotion: I think you'll like Libbie if you haven't read it before. I'll post on Facebook when it's live and available to order.
Watch next for Sundance, Butch and Me, my take on Etta Place's life with the Hole In The Wall Gang and her romance with The Sundance Kid. It's no accident that in the title, Butch Cassidy comes between Sundance and Etta. Fiction after all can suppose, imagine, and take liberties. Want a preview of my approach? Read the short story, "Reunion," in Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories, available as an e-book for 99 cents. http://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Learns-Dance-Other-Stories/dp/0977179737/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331599197&sr=1-2
Enough bragging, but I'm excited to see these older works available to readers once again. Hmmm, twenty years is older? My, how time flies.

Running headlong into modern medicine

There are three things I swore I would never have: a torn rotator cuff, a root canal, and surgery on my feet or hands. My record is not very good. I tore my rotator cuff so long ago that by the time it was diagnosed the shoulder specialist said the muscles were atrophied and there was nothing to repair. That sound he heard was a long sigh of relief from me, because I've heard it's a horrible surgery. My shoulder works fine, and I keep it limber by doing yoga, etc., because I know a frozen shoulder requires treatment even worse than repairing the torn rotator cuff. No, I cannot lift a stack of plates onto a high shelf with my right arm--but my right arm can help my left arm, and we all get along just fine.
Then I had a bad toothache--root canal called for. All I can say is that it was one of the longest, most unpleasant mornings in my life, and the tooth is a tad sensitive to this day. I know better now than to swear I'll never have it again--but I am talking to the Lord about it a lot and asking his preventive help. I'm not sure dedicated dental hygiene helps--I think the need for root canals is just visited on  you willy-nilly.
But Monday I am having minor foot surgery--voluntarily. It's funny how once you commit to this, telling yourself it's no big deal, it's on your mind all the time. I found myself thinking about it a lot today, marking time by before and after. It truly is no big deal--arthoplasty on two hammer toes, and not major toes--the third and fourth. The podiatrist will do an office procedure under local anesthesia, and he says to think of it like having a tooth pulled. Not sure that is comforting. But I have heard horror stories of earlier repairs--a tourniquet around your leg, which subsequently causes serious blood clots,  breaking the adjoining toes to straighten all together, etc.My doctor assures me none of that is true today--he will pop out a bit of the joint; discomfort for a couple of days, an orthopedic shoe for a month--so fashionable. These toes have caused me a lot of pain and confined me to tennis shoes--talk about fashionable--for some time. And, as the doctor said, they're not getting magically better. It' time.
Ever faithful Betty will take me, Greg will clean the dog poop from the yard (he told me I put my request so delicately), several people will check on me, and I may just play this to the hilt. But still a bit--okay a large bit of me--is nervous about the actual procedure. I tell myself it will soon be over and I'll be on the other side.
I hope not to concentrate on it all day tomorrow. What can you do to help? Make me laugh, please.

Deborah Crombie's No Mark Upon Her--some thoughts

Not much I can say about Deborah Crombie's latest novel, No Mark Upon Her, that hasn't already been said--and better. Her capture of the King's English, as the Brits speak it, is convincing and consistent. I'm no expert, but it sounds right to me and others who know more have praised it highly. In this, her sixteenth Duncan Kincid/Gemma James novel, she takes on the world of competitive rowing and captures not only its special language but the passion rowers feel for their sport and some of the ins and outs of technique. Watch for her again on the Thames--she tried rowing for research but seems so taken by it that I wouldn't be surprised to see her in a single skull.
No Mark Upon Her is also suspense at its best, intricately plotted, and just when you think you have it figured out, Crombie is one step ahead and throws a curve into things.  Duncan takes on his "guv'nor" in this one, and the reader truly wonders if he'll come out of it unscathed. Gemma meanwhile is supposed to be ignoring police matters because it's still her turn to be home with three-year-old Charlotte, the child they've adopted who still shows many fears from losing her parents. But Gemma can't ignore cases tangential to this one.
Above all, however, what draws me to read each novel in this series as soon as I can after pubication is the way Crombie pulls the reader into the lives of Duncan and Gemma and their sons, Kit and Toby, and now little Charlotte. Scotland Yard detectives become human when you watch them deal with family and child-raising issues.
Finally, there's Deborah herself who as far as I can tell has not let success go to her head, though she clearly delights in it. She makes everyone, including me, feel like a friend, and she's likeable, down-to-earth, and wryly funny.
I recommend her books a lot, and I always say start with the first in the series--they're listed on the verso of the title page. But I have a list if you want to ask. This time I say start with the latest novel. In my opinion it's her finest so far. Read No Mark Upon Her and then go back to A Share in Death. You'll enjoy watching the relationship between Duncan and Gemma grow and change and watching Crombie's increased mastery of the form--and you'll get a cracking good mystery with each read. Oh, and a nice taste of England, with a bit of Scotland thrown in. What more could one want?
I'm not one of those who feels obliged to find some flaw with each book or author, so my recommendaiton is without qualification.

Bummer of a day

Bummer all around--or mostly. I went to a "Meet and Greet" at an upscale, high-rise retirement community this morning to meet women who might be interested in my memoir class, but someone had dropped the ball. The energetic, enthusiastic woman who had contacted me and set this up is out on medical leave, and somehow no one else picked it up. Nada. Not one person. So I came home. But I had dressed and gone up there--an hour out of my day that I could have put to better use. Only good was that I visited with my longtime friend, Margie, who now lives there but even that wasn't good. She told me her husband has some new, potentially severe blood disorder--no energy, etc.
When I came home about eleven, it was steamy hot--I opened the car windows. About an hour later, Jordan called to ask if I had a spare jacket for  Jacob. A norther had blown in with the suddenness that happens in Texas and dropped the temperature thirty degrees. Darn cold and damp to boot. It rained but had quit by the time I went to get Jacob. I took one of my down vests which he flatly refused to put on until his teacher asked him if he wanted to miss spring break. At last, reluctantly, he wrapped it around himself for the short walk home.
Linda, who always eats dinner with me before memoir class, bailed today because she didn't feel well and all that rain was predicted (she has an hour drive to get here), so that was another disappointment. I had bacon and eggs for supper instead of the anticipated meatloaf at the Grill, but then someone brought chicken salad and pimiento cheese finger sandwiches to class and I made an absolute pig of myself.
Memoir class is always rewarding--tonight three people presented memories of their childhoods and did a terrific job of evoking time and place. We could smell, hear, see,and feel the places they described, especially a lakefront cabin on Lake Michigan. I grew up with such a cabin, and Mary Margaret's piece tonight made me most nostalgic. Some really good writing comes out of these women, and I am amazed and gratified. We talked a lot about description--how much is too much? General consensus: description draws us in as readers. When we stood in our circle to close the session and said one word about how we felt, mine was enriched. You know what? Maybe it wasn't such a bummer of a day after all.
Stay tuned, please, for blogs to come on the reprints I'm about to get posted as e-books--I'm excited-- and my thoughts on loss of hearing.  Subjects that are rattling around in my brain.

Not much

I thought I wouldn't post tonight. Buried in a set of galleys, nose to the grindstone, and no deep thoughts nor exciting events to report. But I decided I needed a break. Started the day at the Volkswagen dealership where they ordered a part so I have to go back Friday--double drat. They also told me I had two nails in my right rear tire--but the tire place they sent me to was really fast and reasonable. VW told me ten minutes, and that's what those tire people did. Lunch full of laughter with Dick Hoban and his daughter and one of her co-workers at the zoo.
Tonight had my second meal in two days at The Woodshed--and loved it. A beet and ricotta salad--ricotta was too bland for these smoky sharp beets. They deserved goat cheese, but it was still great. Then the animal of the day was lamb--the most tender, flavorful I've had in forever.
But of course the day got interesting with a special news report on Super Tuesday. The Republican race continues to amaze--and leaves me, for one, breathless wondering who will eventually win. I cannot imagine the Repubican party with Rick Santorum as their frontispiece. It strikes me that John Boehner has been very very quiet lately--and for a while he was all over TV screens. Of course the outcry about Rush Limbaugh goes on but the point has already been made, and those that still call for denouncing him are simply coming late to the party. There are, as I've said, many things that I waited late in life to learn and wish I'd learned much earlier--add an interest in politics to that list. Though this year it's like watching a carnival. Funny, if the future of the country weren't at stake.
Tomorrow another early day--dentist at 8:30! But for today, that's it. I repeat, no deep thoughts, no great adventures.
Now I'll happily go back to proofing galleys of my 1994 novel, Libbie--a fictional biography of Elizabeth Custer. Look for more about that later.

Who--or What--Are You? And Do You Re-Read Books/

We seem to be fascinated these days with classifying people--and heaven knows, there are any number of ways to classify them. Here are the classes into which I clearly fit: senior citizen, woman, liberal, Protestant. Therein if you're into statistics, you can tell a lot about me from how I'll vote in November to how I feel about Rush Limbaugh--don't ask.
But there are other, less clearly defined ways of looking at people, and some of them are amusing. There's been some buzz on the internet lately about introverts and extroverts--my daughter-in-law wrote about that on Raggedy Madness and announced she's an introvert though capable of being as social as the next one when the situation calls for it. I've read several pieces about this inborn disposition and have decided I'm an ambivert--dead square in the middle. My favorite place to be, admittedly, is at my desk in a quiet, empty house, probably with a dog asleep at my feet (ah, I'm in heaven right now for that's the situation). But give me, say, a week of evenings alone at my desk, and I am irritable, bored, lonely, cross--name a negative and I'll claim it. I love to have my house full of people, my favorites being of course my children and grandchildren. But there are a lot of friends I like to have come join me for supper, a visit, whatever. Fill my house with people--or take me whirling off to parties and dinner with friends and meetings--for five days, and I long for the solitude of my house and my office and the undemanding company of my dogs. I'm not happy for any length of time as an introvert or an extrovert, so I clearly define myself as an ambivert.
Yet another classification has come to my attention in the last couple of days. I've talked here before about authors who are plotters (everything carefully plotted out before they write that first sentence) and pantsers (those who write that first sentence, and let the muse loose to see where it will carry them). Now someone on a mystery listerv has raised the question of whether or not pantsers ever re-read books or watch a movie twice. I'm not sure I see the exact correlation but apparently the thought was that if you're a free enough spirit to be a pantser, you must be bored with planning and knowing ahead and you won't want to read a book twice. The theory is getting shot down because lots who consider themselves pantsers write about the books they read annually, or those they love to go back to occasionally. I've got to admit not only to being a pantser but to almost never re-reading a book. Nothing makes me more distressed than to come home from the bookstore (or download from Kindle now) in anticipation of an evening of cozy reading only to find after five pages I've already read the thing. One of the wonders of the Kindle program--and probably other digital programs--is that you can preview twenty pages of a book. If you don't know by then if you've read it, you might just as well give up and read it again.
What about you? Do you re-read books? Think it makes you an ambivert? 

Daughters and teachers--and who's in charge of the schoolroom?

Across the nation, the educational crisis is a major concern, though I'm not certain how to define this crisis. But here in Texas, where the crisis is very real, it has to do with major budget cuts, teacher layoffs, and teacher fatigue/burnout/whatever you want to call it. In Fort Worth, the ISD is offering early buy-outs to teachers, which is good in that it avoids layoffs--but wait, we need more teachers, not fewer!
I have now seen the Texas educational crisis up close and personal when I was in Houston last week. My daughter-in-law, Lisa, teaches math and science in a Houston-area school district where, as she delicately puts it, the kids aren't real interested in learning. Lisa is a creative teacher, recipient of several honors. She is full of ideas, new ways to make learning a challenge kids want to accept. For instance, she went with her own daughter on a school field trip one day last week and came home saying what a great classroom the outdoors would make. You could teach kids about ecology and environmental issues, weather, insect and animal life, geography and geometry. Her mind was busy.
But Lisa comes home every night head-in-her-hands exhausted. Some days it is after six before she's home, and she's in bed by 8:30 or 9:00, totally worn out. She's out the door by 7:30 in the morning. One day she said to me, "Those kids just wear me out." She's aware that her exhuastion is not fair to her husband, my son, or to her two children, ages seven and almost five. She doesn't want to come in the door, crabby and short with everyone, no time for fun. Yet some nights she can't help herself. I said something tentative about needing a life out of school, and she agreed, said she had resolved to do only what had to be done at school. And she did tell me that she and her daughter, Morgan, spent yesterday gardening together--preparing beds, going to the nursery, planting. A great day for mother and child--but probably too rare. Lisa knew she had a stack of projects waiting to be graded. Her students were clamoring for their grades.
Lisa is also fortunate in her choice of husbands, not just because he's my son but because he's a patient, helpful guy. He does the dinner dishes--albeit not till morning, which drives me crazy. But Lisa simply puts her dish on the counter and walks away. He often does laundry, and putting the kids down for the night is a cooperative project. Lisa freely admits she doesn't know how teachers do it without someone helpful like Colin.
How long will Lisa continue to teach? I have no idea. Right now she still loves her work, but the day may come when she throws her hands up in the air and gives up. We'll all be the losers if that happens.
She's been talking a lot about education to my other daughter-in-law, Melanie, who is upset at the slim attention paid to the gifted and talented program in her youngest daughter's school. Her oldest daughter--my oldest grandchild, brag, brag--is an outstanding athlete and gets all kinds of support from the system, from equipment to extra time. The youngest gets 90 minutes a week out of the regular classroom. (See Raggedy Madness, "Fast Food Education Nation," ,http://raggedymadness.com/2012/02/28/141/ ) Melanie and Lisa have been designing the ideal school they'd run. I wsh it could be more than a pipe dream for both of them.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."  We seem to have lost track of the importance of education in this country, and I f ind it scary. When the politicians, not educators, make policy decisions (including textbook choices), when the easiest budget to cut is education, when a politician calls a liberal education a threat to the country, when we pay our sports hero but not our thinkers and teachers, we are in great trouble. I hope my two daughers can make a difference, but they need help, folks.

A visit with family

I never blog beforehand when I'm going away. It strikes me as waving a banner that says, "Hey, my house is empty. Come on by," even though my house isn't totally empty. There are two dogs and the pet sitter is in and out. But in the last few days a few may have caught hints that I wasn't in my usual place.
I was in Houston with my oldest son, Colin, his wife, Lisa, and their two children--seven-year-old Morgan and four-and-a-half -year-old Kegan. I did all those grandmotherly things that I probably don't do enough with Jacob--I see him almost every day, and I rarely see these children. I think that made me more conscious of being an attentive grandparent. I went to gymnastics and a soccer game, and I listened to Morgan read her two short books every night. In truth I was impressed with her reading, though she has to work a bit on intonaton and expression:-) While they were at school and at work, I did a lot on my chili book, did my yoga each day, and was quite domestic--emptying and re-loading the dishwasher (the first time I emptied it and shelved unwashed dishes, so after that we had to clarify), made a pot of chili one night, two batches of brownies another day, not sure what all but one day it was noon before I got to my own work. Colin came home and asked, "You weren't bored?" and I assured him not. Colin is a controller for five golf courses and Lisa teaches 7th grade math, the children are in day care, and everyone is gone until 6:30 at night. And they're all in bed by 8:30--I had a two-hour visiting window.
These are children I don't see as much of and the little one has been really shy about hugging me--or allowing me to hug him. We broke that barrier this time, to my great joy, and both children clamored for my attention, hugged me goodnight, told me about their day. It was a delight. Lisa said tonight she thinks it's better when it's just me rather than all the family, and she's probably right. That doesn't happen often, but now I will have to make it happen more often with those children and with daughter Megan's Austin sons.

Colin took me from Kingwood--north of Houston where they live--one day to the Omni Galleria for a lunch with my former colleagues from A&M and associated presses. It was a real treat for me to see everyone and to show off my handsome son, though he expected a "luncheon" and got a box lunch. Good thing I convinced him he didn't have to wear a suit. Today, he hauled me and my baggage back down to the Omni. The baggage was much condensed because I didn't want to go into the hotel looking like the Joads had arrived. Still he took it up to the second floor, then down to the parking garage to stash in Melinda's car, and then came up to return her key and ask, "Are you okay now?" I rely on Colin, his steadfastness and his strength, a whole lot, poor boy. But I love him dearly.
Another delight of being out of my routine and element: for the first time in several weeks, I was able to pick up a book and lose myself in it. I'd saved Deborah Crombie's No Mark Upon Her for this trip, and I got a good start on it. Now, of course I don't want to do anything but read--and a few other things do call. But she is quite simply an exceptional writer. A Texan, she has the British lingo down pat, from car park for parking lot to the expletive "Sod him!" In this book, she ventures into the world of competitive rowing, with its own peculiar language and customs and does a triumphant job. I'm a great fan and love reading the book.
Now I'm back home, with dogs to feed and love, groceries to buy, errands to run, meals to cook--the whole nine yards. But I'll find time to keep reading.
And Morgan delighted me as I left today by asking, "Can we face time with you?" Of course she can, sweet thing. I'm feeling like a happy grandmother tonight.

How Did I Get Here, Part 2

My talented, beautiful and intelligent daughter-n-law, Melanie (I have two daughters-in-law who fit that description, so I have to specify) wrote that she gave up two things she loved to do--writing and ballet--because she couldn't make a living at either.http://raggedymadness.com/2012/02/24/lean-in/  Young, I had no such practical ideas. In college, I majored in English because I liked to read. A career? Pouf! I was a daughter of the fifties. Some man was going to marry me and take care of me, presumably while I read Silver Screen and ate bonbons. Soon I found myself with a Ph.D. in English and no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Oh, there was a man to take care of me, but that went awry after nearly twenty years.
I had always written, starting with short stories as a ten-year-old and progressing to stories of teen-age angst that Seventeen, that bible of young girls, rejected without hesitation. I found myself doing pr and editing a medical journal and an alumni newspaper--paste-up and all in the old days, though I'd had no journalism training. Once I had that Ph.D. and children and was a stay-at-home wife and mom, with a nanny thank-you-very-much, I settled down to write. There were literally days when I thought I'd write if I only knew what to write. Unlike some senior citizens who become successful authors almost by accident (See Radine Nehring's excellent post on the subject at http://madisonjohns11.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/im-a-late-bloomer-radine-trees-nehring/), I was always dead set on a career. I had banished that girl who wanted to read and eat bonbons.
Flash forward forty years. No blatant self promotion, but I have over sixty published books--fiction for adults, fiction for young adults, a lot of nonfiction for young readers, some miscellaneous titles such as a literary biography and a cookbook, and now mysteries. I also have some rather nice awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from Western Writers of America. I'm neither rich nor famous, but it's a respectable record for a writer. Still it was never enough. I wanted more. Once a woman who was my sister in spirit suggested I'd had as much success as I could expect and I ought to quit worrying about it--she was always forthright. But that wasn't my way.
I had as many rejections as acceptances--or more--over the years, and I have every author's stack of rejected manuscripts that will never go anywhere except to my archive at the Southwest Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos. Bantam/Doubleday stayed with me for much of 1990s. amd several childrens' publishers and book packagers were steady clients in the late '90s and early in 2000 until the market changed, so they said. I never had a secure long-term publishing home with enough faith in me to work out a career plan.. 
Today my mystery career is off to a great start--the first Kelly O'Connell Mystery published, another due in April, another in August, the start of a second series in January, and a fourth as-yet unwritten and unscheduled Kelly O'Connell Mystery due in 2013. There's a lingering question in my mind about why I had to be in my seventies for this sudden roll I'm on, just as I wonder why I wasn't at thirty the woman I am now. My brother says he sees it as me re-inventing myself once again, which he believes I've done a few times before. He wanted credit for that statement, and I am glad to give it because I take it as a compliment. I think the capacity to re-invent yourself, if that's what I've done, comes with age and perhaps as a close friend suggested grace.
My new blooming career is thanks to Turquoise Morning Press. I'm a big believer in the small press movement that, along with self-publishing digitally, is changing the publishing world forever. But I doubt I would have been swept up in this movement thirty years ago. I wasn't ready, and neither was my writing. Almost certainly, retirement had something to do with this, freeing me to focus on my writing and also freeing me of a lot of stress. I'm also a fan of retirement, although all those years I would have told you I had the ideal job as director of a small academic press. And what I learned all those years on the "other side" of publishing stands me in good stead. Yet I'm a poster child for retirement, and a fan, if somewhat reluctantly, of aging. Just joined a Facebook page called Spunky Seniors--you gotta love it.