PRIDE AND PREJUDICE REWRITTEN

Having now read twenty four Jane Austen rewrites, epilogues and sequels, I have finally found one that I can whole heartedly recommend as a wonderful read through a totally new experience of the meeting, courtship and marriage of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy.



The entire setting is different though the author uses the same characters, places, and quotes from the original. However, many story facts and events are changed. Despite my derision of people capitalizing from the creative efforts of others, this book kept me entranced with the right amount of emotional capture. The highs were not too high and the lows were not frightening, nor chapters full of anxiety provocation. The book reads and moves quickly. Since my preference is for 'feel-good' books, Pemberley Promises made good on that promise. There is a decided attempt to hold the reader's attention with threatened, not realized disasters. Austen fans everywhere might find this acceptable after they, (as is usual with Austen fans), have memorized the entire original book, in which case they might be confused by this version.

I think I've discovered that a higher price and a thicker book, for the most part, is consistent with a higher quality of writing. Try it; you might like it!

DUNKIN DONUTS' KINDNESS TO SENIORS

Built as sturdily as a tank, I try to avoid eating too many donuts. However, with three adolescent grandsons hungry for breakfast, I hopped in my car with one of them and made every corner. The grandson with me made the selections for a dozen donuts as I watched a police man arrive empty handed and leave with donuts and coffee.

Box filled, the lady serving us asked for $6.94. As I pulled out my wallet she looked at me and asked if I was over 65. Laughing to myself at just how many years over was just as well she not guess, I admitted, shamelessly, that I was. She told me that I was entitled to a discount so it would be only $5.84.


While the boys were there on another couple of occasions and voting for waffles or donuts, they voted donuts because as one told another, "We can get waffles any time we want to in the UK but we can't get donuts!" Suddenly there was a unanimous vote for donuts so I was back to purchase the next batch. This time my white hair and obvious advancement of years pushing my belt out triggered nothing as I was asked for $6.94. I said, "That's odd, last time I was here I got a senior discount, at which point I received an apology with some effusion, and she told me it would be $5.84.

My third trip had us waiting in line while to servers chatted and giggled, obviously enjoying some familiar chatting. When finally we were noticed and ordered out dozen donuts, carefully selected to include triple chocolate, cinnamon, jelly, glazed, Boston Kreme, strawberry iced, a cruller, and some others, I was asked for $6.94 again. This time I said, "No, it's $5.84 (as I had the right amount counted out in a bill and coins)". The rocket scientist behind the country looked strangely at me then with the light bulb exploding in her eyes, she said, "Oh, right! You get a discount."


This proves, at any point after 62, your first priority is to find which stores have a day for senior discount and which day of the week that is; at what age the senior discount starts; what the per cent of the discount is; and any other pertinent necessary disclosures.

DIFFICULT SITES TO MANEUVER

There was a time when I used PayPal. When I changed my ISP and my email address changed, I forgot that PayPal had me listed under another address so I was not able to log on. I tried logging in at the old address (as I had at another site) to find where it asks if you have changed your email address and to,please, make the change now, with very clear, specific steps for doing so. At the time, I was in my usual rush and, after finding no way to change my email address, I paid with a credit card and promptly forgot about PayPal.

However, now five months later, I realize that many shopping sites prefer using PayPal and my original reasons for signing up resurfaced. This time I bit the bullet and just went on as a new account. That works for me but I wonder how long it will take for them to clean out their database. Since they are owned by eBay, I presume that it is a very data base.

Finally, after many tries (I would not have persevered had it not been very important to the person for whom I was ordering), I was able to succeed in setting up an account and able to order my item on the spot. There was no explanation of what the difference is in shipping rates. I was guessing that Priority (simply because it costs more) must be faster than First Class. There seemed to be no overnight delivery which I would have preferred. Oh well, I wish the techs or amateurs who make up these sites would try to use them or that there was someplace one could give them some tips on the frustrations customers experience on ordering from some sites, or going through phone mazes that never ask a useful question or list the right category!

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS

SOUTH HERO, Vt. -- An arrangement for a man to meet (who he thought were two teenagers) for sex started with an accidental cell phone text message and ended with his estranged wife setting him up for a police sting, according to Vermont State Police.
From WPTZ News:

Apparently, this man got a call from his estranged wife on a new phone. He didn't recognize the number so she set up a sting by saying that she was a 17 year old with a 15 year old girlfriend, who would meet him for sex. (Wife was 23 to his 40) The police met him rather than the 'girls' when he sought to consummate the plan.

Had the wife not made it possible for the police to catch him, this man may have harmed other young girls, if he has not already done so. The police cannot be everywhere and see everything. We need to take care of ourselves and each other. Neighborhood watches have accomplished safety quite well. The world can no longer tolerate people looking blankly at crimes and other destructive behaviors with a sense that 'someone else' will make it right. "Let George do it" may have served as a motto in World War II but has no longer a place in our society when it comes to protecting one another. Reminded of a sign I saw on the wall in the hospital registration office years ago, "Pick up after yourself; your mother doesn't work here" we must keep our own medical histories, take more responsibility for learning to care for ourselves, offer help to those near us who may need it should it be within our province to offer it, and get rid of the selfishness or self-centeredness that has been generated in our country for the last two generations.

ANOTHER RAINY DAY

It seems as though it has already rained forty days and forty nights. Not only has it rained, but there has been thunder and lightning. When there are strong winds, we tend to lose electricity. It follows: one feels powerless without power! It is hard to read by flashlight only. Candles romantically illuminate but do little to enable reading small print.

These gray days make me tired, too tired to even look for the rainbow that must be there when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. Having seen rainbows in my lifetime (actually two, at once, over the Golden Gate Bridge) I can stay comfortable and dry and picture the rainbow in my head. It satisfies me, yet I wonder if memories like that are robbed by age. Are they less significant than plot novels, which I can't retain as soon as I have read the last page?

Straining to breathe the humid air, I realize that I am also straining it somehow through my nostrils. I wonder when my evolutionary lungs will revert back to gills. My ability to hold my breath under water has never been strong. In fact the closest i came to it was watching the guy on TV having himself waterboarded. Of what am I thinking? Give me some dry air!

Parking lots are small lakes. There is no way to see just how deep they are until I follow the car in front or find myself wishing my car was amphibious. Indoors, the humidity is quickly oxidizing the brass and silver I so recently used all my elbow grease to polish. Pages stick to one another; the next page makes no sense. Confusion forces me back. Everything around me has lost color.

I've begun counting the squirrels in the back yard and am sure a pair is missing. When I hear pounding I search for the Ark but since we live on a hill, I have yet to see signs on Noah, not even Evan Almighty. Meanwhile I watch the weather map and get cheered up. It's worse everywhere else. As I swallow more Vitamin D, I fantasy the death I am avoiding from tornadoes, forest fires, and earthquakes. Turning into a prune with moss on my North side seems preferable, somehow.

DEATH OF FRIENDS

Without discussing the obvious, the sense of loss, the empathy of a vital life being snuffed out, the sympathy for a friend’s adult children who must now do without that last remaining parent, handle an estate, clean out a living space and all the tasks of sifting though the memorabilia of a parent’s lifetime, I am now focused on how such a loss impacts on my own life.

Many of my senior friends say they have no friends left as they have all died. For men, whose life expectancy is shorter, this seems to be even more a truth. My response is and will continue to be, “Make new and younger friends”.

Hospitalization gives one time to prepare for a loss; that a miracle probably will not happen, My brain did not want to think of the alternative or absence of my friend from my life. The movie of our many years of friendship played at super speed in my head. Gone were the days when she could walk in a museum, shop without one of those motorized carts (which not too many places offer), and ultimately our time together had gradually become less frequent.. It seemed that this must be Nature’s way of preparing people; an illness, debilitation, loss of mobility and then death…the permanent separator.

Many illnesses make the process of losing someone even longer, worse when the mind is altered so that the person is gone and only the body remains. Spared that, one sees the effects on our ebbing lives. We slow down, we learn less, we sleep through TV and become less interested in world events. Some lives become so limited from the paucity of new input, even phone conversations become tedious to more active minds and the intensity of the old intimacy and connectedness begins to fade.

People live as memories everafter. We relive the love, connectedness, fun things we did, laughter shared, things taught and learned, help offered and received, and so much more. Some of us move on and pick up our lives; sadly some seem unable to let the past go and stay in a place that no longer exists either for those we grieve or for ourselves.

MESSING UP ON AIR

Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian of Presidents, being interviewed the other day, meant to tell a management rule. She misquoted, saying, "Never wrestle with a pig in mud; he will get dirty and he will love it." It should have been, "Never wrestle with a pig in manure. You will get dirty and the pig will love it." (actually from a group of four rules, another which was, "Never step between a dog and a lamp post."

George W. Bush: "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

Effortlessly someone slipped, omitting the 'm' from masses; another emitted an embarrassing and loud belch during a weather announcement, and there are a few other chuckles to prove we are all human and can goof...though some examples are reasons other than stupidity A source of goofs I have been researching for the past eight years..