2000-03-20 - 01:03:33

My wife, Heather, let me have my birthday present early because she new how much I wanted it. It is a Franklin electronic Bookman - MWD1440 dictionary / thesaurus. Its neat, light and can fit in a shirt pocket. I can't back up to do a spell check while in the writing mode. Only after it is ready to send can the spell checking be done. If there was a key to press to get an immediate spell check - definition there would be no need of the Franklin, however there is no way to spell check with this Webtv unit on for instance, on the entry I am making now. Therefore the Franklin is needed. It sure beats reaching and hefting the damn dictionary and leafing through the pages. I have been using it since a day or two ago, maybe should have said, "been learning to use it." Available are many, "Book Card' inserts such as english-french-english Book Card inserts, a cookbook, great documents of American history, a concise encyclopedia, a card for Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, one for games, one for the Physician's Desk Reference, a Read With Me Bible for the little kids. The only disadvantage is each one costs from around ten dollars to around thirty dollars. The encyclopedia is the one costing the most.

I am limited by my ability to perceive (the preceding word just typed in I used the little gem to make sure that I was spelling right) the need for the use of it. The definitions help make sure the right word is chosen. But the durn thing can't look over my shoulder and follow what is being put in and blowing a whistle immediately an error is struck. That will probable be next years model, and the year after that ? Oh, probably one that with which a few simple vocal instructions can turn out an essay, thesis or novel. Then the main effort will be to teach the children the right questions and requests to say into the infernal thing. Progress is moving faster than I can run !

Heather is doing fairly well, she drove out to a niece's house in the suburbs to a yearly gathering of her nieces and women friends of the mother of them and Heather's sister.

Mary died on this date some number of years ago and the daughters were grown and married, living away from home with progeny. But the strong feeling of orphanation came over the women and the yearly lunch and gabfest helps all. Heather's side has always been a close knit group with all the relatives keeping in close touch with each other. Mary was loved by all, including me, who had never had a sister, had a little one in her after I married her aunt. After I married Heather I was treated as a natural born member of the family, I married into my brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. Every sunday all the nuclear family and their kids would go to Heather's mother's house for dinner. Some came late (after work) and stayed late, some came early and left early to go to work. If someone wanted to go fishing or something else that day, there were no bad feelings. It was just, if we were in town we went to the gathering of the clan, the men swapped stories and jokes and the women "gossiped" a rather unfair term for talking about the new babies or the ones not yet to term, clothing, et al. I, of course, still loved my parents but they were different.

My father in law taught me the fine points of fishing, my methods before that were rather crude and clumsy. Heather's youngest brother taught me how to ski, and took the wife and I and sister Mary to a dam in the nearby mountains where the city of Denver kept the ice cleared off and smoothed for an invigorating day of skating. Some of the family were into home crafts, I learned how to hook rugs with my father in law.

What of them that are still left were and are the most laid back people I have ever seen, kind, gentle good hearted, generous people. During the early years as a member of the family, my mother in law treated me as a son and made sure I had a new lined denim jacket and warm gloves to wear at work in the cold. No big fanfare, she was just quietly making we kids were as comfortable as was possible as she could. She made most of the clothes for our kids clear up through early grade school and gracefully bowed to the fads and customs of the older kids wanting store bought stuff. I miss her, I miss gramps and I miss the cousins and in laws who are no longer with us. We enjoy being with the survivors.

Being a member of the family helped me in so many ways. Helped form my adult philosophy, my valuing of that close knit family life, helped me make the adjustment from the life of an only child to life of a member of a large family. And helped me learn control my temper, as things were never as smooth as Pollyannas existence, hubris existed. Heather helped me out greatly, sometimes when I would gripe to her about something one of the family did or was doing she would mention some of the things I did which were not SOP and she knew they were putting up with it out of courtesy to her husband. What a wonderful life I have lived since marriage and the arrival of our children. How lucky can one man get, and still be on earth instead of Heaven ?

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