getting acquainted, settling in...

Well, here I am. I haven't lived the most exciting life, I don't suppose, but I've lived, and that's worth something, after all. I'm pretty technologically challenged - use Word at work, and have learned a lot about online grant submissions, dabble in Excel. Well, what I'm trying to say is that this is going to be a pretty basic-looking blog. I'll see if I can't figure out how to add pictures and such as I go along, but for now, just finding an acceptable password has exhausted my intellectual capabilities for the duration. I've spent the past day or so perusing "older bloggers" and oddly enough (Hello?) I really like what I'm reading. We seem to have quite a bit - at least attitude and opinion-wise - in common. Mostly, I do see some intrinsic value in sharing our thoughts and memories at this stage in our lives. I'm doing a journal of sorts - with some pictures of ancestors, etc. - for posterity; for the errant descendant who may be interested in what we were REALLY like back in "the old days". I decided to do that after becoming temporarily obsessed with genealogical research - worked furiously for a couple of weeks, mostly using the Church of Latter Day Saints website, and managed to trace my father's family back to England - he had ancestors on the Mayflower - and farther back to the Norse Odin, whom I though was a mythological character, but as it turns out, was an actual human being, and even farther back, if it can be belived, to someone named Godwulf Asgard born in the year 80 in Asia/Eastern Europe. It would also seem that Lady Godiva is a great-great-multiple great(s) grandmother, and there were even some kings and queens in the mix. Of course it's proven to be a highly fertile line - we descendants appear to be in the multiples of thousands. I wish some-damned-body who came before me had the foresight to remember that we'd be coming along some day, and a nice old house in Newport (R.I. - my father's family were rooted in Little Compton & Tiverton, just across the bridge) might have been a nice legacy to pass along, but apparently our line was as self-centered as it was fertile, because I never got so much as a seashell collection passed along to me. Okay, okay, my POINT in getting into all of this is that after having found all these names and birthdates and death dates, and husbands, wives, children, etc., I still didn't know much of anything about my ancestors - not what they believed, thought, or how they lived or how they felt about anything. And it started to bore me. And frustrate me, as well. May as well 'fess up - I have my masters degree in clinical psychology and worked in the field for many years before giving up my hands-on practice and concentrating on writing for a living. The way people think and why they think what they think interests me. Facts and figures just aren't my forte. So, I'm writing my cantankerous observations and cutting-edge analysis of "the way things are", so at the very least, anyone who comes after me and has any interest whatsoever, will have the capacity to know a little bit about my world view and not be left guessing (too much). Oh, wait. I see an "add image" icon up there. Maybe I can give this a shot -

And what do you know? There I am, on Sakonnet Point at sunset last October when my sis and I went together - two old crones - on a "sentimental journey", revisiting our childhood haunts together. Sis, incidentally, is 74, and can still navigate those rocks like a mountain goat.

And, I am off to sleep, perchance to dream as Willie would've said.

Catch you later -

Z