{"id":9896,"date":"2023-11-22T23:53:02","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/?p=9896"},"modified":"2023-11-22T23:53:51","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:53:51","slug":"were-these-flights-of-fancy-or-am-i-just-plain-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/2023\/11\/22\/were-these-flights-of-fancy-or-am-i-just-plain-nuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Were These Flights of Fancy or Am I Just Plain Nuts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letter from America<\/span><\/h1>\n

I was having a difficult time concentrating this week.\u00a0 No, I was not ill and I had nothing in particular on my mind. That was the problem. When I sat down to write this week\u2019s piece several days ago, I simply could not think of a topic of interest to me. \u00a0I have faced that predicament before, so I began to write by employing the word \u201cperhaps\u201d to begin my initial sentence.\u00a0 You might not be aware of this, but typing the word \u201cperhaps\u201d at the top of a page is a sure-fire technique to jumpstart the first draft of a school composition, undergraduate-level college paper, essay, or blog entry.\u00a0 It has never failed me in the past.\u00a0 However, in that attempt to write, \u201cperhaps\u201d was as far as I got.\u00a0 Seventeen minutes after striking that \u201cs\u201d on my keyboard, I had already wandered over to YouTube, where I finished watching half a dozen videos of random groups of people performing the \u201cHarlem Shake.\u201d You might wonder how I then so effortlessly moseyed over to Wikipedia, where, for another quarter-hour, I educated myself about the population of Luxembourg (509,074 as of 2012, for those of you who might be interested), and learned that David Bowie\u2019s wife, Iman, was born to a gynecologist mother and an ambassador father.\u00a0 One glance at a photo of this exquisitely fit supermodel caused my stomach to rumble.\u00a0 Pumped up with determination to satisfy my hunger pangs with a healthy meal, I made myself a bowl of granola with sliced banana.\u00a0 Upon uncapping the bottle of skim milk in the refrigerator, I discovered that it was just \u201coff\u201d enough to make me gag.\u00a0 Another ten minutes wasted, and I realized I had to go to the grocery store (where one can while away an hour or two, especially if vendors are offering free snacks or if one runs into a friend one hasn\u2019t seen in 18 years, as happened to me on that excursion).<\/p>\n

In my defense, I did have a couple of distractions this week.\u00a0 My sister Susan was visiting from Virginia.\u00a0 She brought along her dog, Una, a delightfully non-yappy Morkie who decided that my writing area\u2014specifically, my bed\u2014was the ideal spot to hunker down for her holiday, but\u00a0only<\/span>when I occupied it.\u00a0 I could not very well\u00a0ignore<\/i>\u00a0the sweet pooch, could I? \u00a0So, during one attempt to write, I instead shared with her some interesting websites on which her kith and kin are featured, an experience she seemed to enjoy as much as I did.\u00a0 Thanks to that mutually satisfying exercise, it became crystal clear to me\u2014oh, and I made it\u00a0abundantly<\/i>\u00a0clear to\u00a0her<\/i>!\u2014that, should I ever acquire another dog, I will not purchase a Morkie; there is just no telling whether the puppy will grow up to look more Maltese than Yorkshire or vice versa.\u00a0 I like predictability in my purchases.\u00a0 However, gazing down at her inquisitive little face, I did assure her that, if I were to\u00a0adopt<\/i>\u00a0a puppy from an animal shelter, I would definitely consider driving home with one of her extended family.\u00a0 Una seemed relieved, but I had wasted yet another good portion of one day in ministering to her psychological well-being.<\/p>\n

\n

\"once<\/p>\n

once upon a time<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

once upon a time<\/span><\/span>Now, no visit from my sister is complete without spending at least one afternoon-into-evening with two of her four adult sons, who often take the train out from their respective Manhattan apartments to my suburban digs.\u00a0 Preparation for a dinner date with these two young men, who are both six feet four inches tall, requires the laying in of a prodigious quantity of food, which is depleted shortly after they remove their winter coats but before they kiss their Auntie Cara hello. My nephews are entertaining, I must admit.\u00a0 In fact, I so greatly relish their company that it was easy during their visit this week to lull myself into a false sense of complacency.\u00a0\u00a0After all, when they depart after dinner<\/i>, I told myself,\u00a0I will have ample time to get cracking on another weekly submission<\/i>.\u00a0Yes\u2026right after I watch the two-hour Season Three finale of \u201cDownton Abbey.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0I was not about to miss that, but,\u00a0Oh!\u00a0 The shock!\u00a0 The horror!\u00a0 Matthew dead.\u00a0 It can\u2019t be.\u00a0 Poor Lady Mary!\u00a0 Poor newborn baby boy!\u00a0<\/i>This cliff-hanger of a development merited long-winded discussion and plot dissection with others until the wee hours.<\/p>\n

Activities of daily living, of course, also cut into my writing time this week, and a person has to sleep, too.\u00a0 Am I not correct?\u00a0 Well, to be honest, not even the ZZZZZZs materialized in the past few nights; I was kept awake with thoroughly unsuitable article topics dancing like out-of-season sugarplums in my head.\u00a0 Come to think of it, those mental gyrations closely resembled an internal version of those videos of the \u201cHarlem Shake,\u201d as they were altogether graceless and without any rhyme, rhythm, or reasonable expectation of creating an enduring impression.<\/p>\n

So, here you have it:\u00a0 Today\u2019s \u201cLetter from America,\u201d begun 15 minutes ago, contains only the minutiae of one person\u2019s week.\u00a0 Perhaps I should apologize.\u00a0 (Oh, and perhaps that last sentence is how I should have started this epistle.)\u00a0 On second thought, of what value is a letter without a few unexciting tidbits of information? This one is chockfull of tidbits! Moreover, in\u00a0this<\/i>\u00a0letter, the sender is neither hitting you up for a loan nor making demands of you for repayment of money you borrowed.\u00a0 There now, isn\u2019t that nice?<\/p>\n

All my best,<\/p>\n

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.<\/span>” mce_’ + path + ‘\\” + prefix + ‘:’ + addy25174 + ‘\\’>’+addy_text25174+'<\\\/a>’; \/\/–><\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2013, DPNLIVE \u2013 All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter from America I was having a difficult time concentrating this week.\u00a0 No, I was not ill and I had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-and-style","category-living-in-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9898,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9896\/revisions\/9898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}