Thanks for what you said,
Betsy, about the joy in my postings when I'm talking about the kittens. But Oscar and Nénu aren't the only people making me smile a lot these days: the other one is my great-niece Grace! I get together with her again on Thursday, and I find that I can't resist spending time on preparation, as more & more I embrace my new role as her teacher/mentor. This week's lesson is going to focus on mail art. We're going to start out by taking a trip to the local post office (which happens to be very close to her house). I've given her an assignment to make a handmade postcard using collage, etc., and to have it all written & addressed & stamped, and I will also have one of my own that's ready to go in the mail. I'll introduce her to the fine art of being polite & friendly to the postal clerks behind the counter, all of whom know me well, and to the importance of getting mail art hand-cancelled, whenever possible. And then we go to my house to look at and learn from all the received mail art I have up on that downstairs wall. (She hasn't seen it yet.) I'm going to loan her my copy of
Good Mail Day—an amazingly well-written and designed primer for anyone interested in sending & receiving more interesting snail-mail. (Highly recommended!)
But her lesson in mail art is not what's going to blow Grace's mind. What's going to blow her mind is that I am going to be giving her my iPad2. As some of you will recall, my beloved iPad2 somehow got a crack in its screen, which actually doesn't bother me hardly at all, and that, plus other factors—such as the fact that I've got a bit of joint pain, maybe early arthritis, in my left thumb, the joint down at the bottom of the palm, from holding up the (relatively) heavy iPad2 every day for hours on end—has made me very tempted to upgrade to the iPad Air, which is much lighter, faster, has a better display, etc. This is an object that is central to my life—for almost all purposes, it
is my computer—so it's not an extravagance to consider the upgrade.
But I was holding back on it because I didn't want to just abandon my iPad2: I've had a very close relationship with it ever since I got it in April 2011. When it occurred to me that Grace, who'll be a freshman in high school this fall, might be able to love it and learn from it and
create with it (the art apps are fabulous), that tipped the balance for me. I called her parents and carefully checked it out with them first, of course, (They do have WiFi in their house.) After some discussion, they called me back and said, "Yes!" So then I bought the iPad Air, which is just a wonderful machine, everything it should be and more...
But Grace doesn't know about this yet, so I'm really looking forward to surprising her on Thursday!
And now I must return to the BERP, which is still in progress... Gee—how come I never talk about diet and exercise? There's just too much
else going on in my life. =laugh=