Learning Curves and 92 Year Old Ladies

I have come out of my cave (or been returned to the planet by the aliens) and finally have signed myself up for Facebook.   It's almost overwhelming the number of folks on there!  And a LOT of fun.  Four hours easily disappeared yesterday as I stumbled around the site, took my webcam photo (v. grainy) and, I hope! sent a few messages to a few folks.  Not really getting the ettiquette of the whole thing but am sure that will come.  After seeing my afternoon disappear, I was temporarily buffaloed as to how one's to handle the time commitment involved there!  Plus one's emails, and other websites and still remember to eat! LOL. 

Mind you, it's also very spooky to sign up for a site and have dead friends pop up to "friend" you.  I wonder if the Facebook folks will do anything about people who don't access their page for years.  Maybe have an automatic delete on profiles after 3 years.  Otherwise, there's going to be this sea of information from dead people floating around the Web forever.  There they all are just "waiting" to ambush family and friends, or even, the grand kids.  Well, it's a kind of immortality I suppose.  It's vaguely Twilight Zone-ish - all these personality profiles living on in electronic space.

Then there are the notifications that suddenly pop up on my iTouch, even when it's playing music.  The music fades away so the notification pops up.  Or I'll have put my iTouch in standby mode, and left it on a table across the room only to have it beep at me.  It's creating a whole new world for me!  It's great being in instant touch with someone three thousand miles away.  'Course, I need to be careful before I post on others' walls - the words will probably be there for eternity too! 

Now.  As to those 92 Year Old Ladies.
Last Friday I found that one, a neighbor had just moved out to a convent in Pennsylvania to be cared for by the nuns there.  All she took with her was her bed, TV, nightstand, a lamp and her recliner.  She left everything else behind.  (Yes, I went to have a peek.)  I mean everything - there were photographs, old souvenirs of trips taken, books, letters, clothes, vases - all things that I consider necessary as part of my life.   Talk about paring down your life, she left very happily with the bare necessities.  There's a certain freedom in that isn't there?  No possessions to hold you back.  She was off to wait out the end of her life there.

The other?  That's my stepmother.  On Friday she got married to a gentleman with whom she's shared company for the past four years.  They were both in World War II though on opposite sides.  She served in the Canadian Red Cross and he served in the German Army.  What's striking to me is that my stepmother and, now, father are very enthusiastic about any and all new things.  They love to explore and discover new things.  They have a very youthful attitude towards living even with some physical challenges.  For them both, all things are possible.  Only their physical fraility may hold them back a bit.  It's very inspiring.  I know which 92 year old lady I'd like to be.