FLOORED!

But wait, there is something else that’s been going on all week and it’s been pretty exciting and a lot messy.  We are having the entire floor space, closets and all, replaced.  Gone is the stained and worn carpet and tile.  Replacing it is “engineered vinyl planks,” the latest in wood-like flooring.  It looks like real wood, is as hard as a rock and is known for being 100% waterproof. Bill the  Dog has already tested this latter feature.

Now, I won’t advise you on what kind of flooring to choose.  You’ll have to go through the purchasing routine like Rosemarie and I did. But I  will advise you of this:  If you can have this kind of flooring installed–especially if you are first tearing out carpeting and chiseling away ceramic tile–try to have it done before you move in.  Having this kind of installation done while you are living in your home…well then, you can expect to be cleaning around the clock. We had enough tile taken up that the process produced a quantity of dust capable of forming a second Sierra Desert.  We even had to wipe the dust off of the dust created the day before.  Every item in every cabinet in the kitchen was coated with a fine layer of dust. Rosemarie, bless her, emptied all the cabinets, washing them down and stuffing the dishwasher with their content.

Then there’s the maneuvering of furniture.  Here’s where my recent back surgery comes onto play–the surgery during which the surgeon dumped an entire Home Depot hardware department into my lower lumbar.  And don’t forget toilets have to be removed…and then put back on afterwards. Guess who does a lot of this work, unless you want to dump about $4-500 bucks into hiring folks to help.  You are already thousands into this project.  But hey, when it’s done I have to admit, despite all the chaos, it really looks nice. Insert commercial here: Thank you Lumber Liquidators.  You were very service-oriented and communication was good. Plus the installation company you linked us to was excellent…they never stopped working, no breaks and not even lunch!  (S.D. Flooring).

It reminds me of the house I grew up in.  It was built in the late 40s and all the floors were three-inch-wide planks of hardwood–pine or oak, I can’t remember.  Those were the floors that folks later spent tons of money COVERING UP with wall-to-wall carpeting or something called linoleum.  I wonder if the future owners of this home will do likewise twenty or so years from now!

*****

THE BIG MOVE…FINAL EPISODE

Well finally!  Mission accomplished. It’s all over except the unpacking. That, I’m afraid, will be going on for some time.  But everything that was there…is now here. The new home (that’s it pictured above, #3) is warm,  welcoming and instantly a hit since it’s all on one level and there are no stairs.

It has been a bit of a daunting challenge at our age.  We just don’t have the stamina or strength that we used to have, no matter how much we try to psych it out.  Tired and aching muscles don’t lie…and the  arthritis seems to be enjoying the ride.  But each day a little more gets done and another box or two or three are emptied and places are found for their content. That alone is a worthy accomplishment because the new house is smaller and has less storage space.  I should have purged more even though I would have had to absorb more abuse from Rosemarie the hoarder.

We are four miles from the Gulf of Mexico and just about every retail store regularly on my shopping list is within a five-to-ten minute drive.  So everything is spot on…except for one major spot-off.  We have a garage.  That was one of the must-haves on our house-hunting list.  It is almost unbelievable, but the entrance to the garage is so narrow for our Sienna Van that we would have to fold the mirrors in before attempting to pass through. Whodda thunk in 2007 they’d design  such a narrow entrance to the garage.  I started to drive in the first day we arrived but I got only about a foot before I chickened out.  The good news is, now I have a place for storage.

Overall, we are pleased with our decision to move and the new unfamiliar location has rekindled our sense of exploration. The other evening we set the boxes aside and went to the fishing pier to watch the sunset. It wasn’t the best sunset because of a few misplaced clouds, but the water was beautiful and inviting.  It will take some time for me to refer to this body of water as a”the Gulf” and not “the Ocean.”

Last night we discovered Marcato, pictured below. It’s a 3-4 block stretch of a gazillion restaurants and specialty shops with a Whole Foods end-capping the whole array.  The restaurant at which we had dinner easily lived up to its name:  Bravo!

But the purpose for our moving had little to do with our desire for a change in scenery.  There was a lot of practicality that went into our planning.  We wanted to move into a home that would be more efficient and less of a strain on our retirement funds. The goal was survival–meaning if one of our Social Security  checks were to permanently go away, the remaining spouse could still afford to live in the house.  I had prepared elaborate spreadsheets of all of expenses and compared them to those of any house we considered buying.  How accurate were these projections? Time will tell. Already within the two weeks we’ve been here, we have received pro-rated refunds from our auto and home-owners  insurance companies.  The annul premium on our car insurance alone dropped over $600! If anything, our new environment should provide new fodder to feed this blog.  So buckle up Sparky, we’re going in and at my age it shouldn’t take much to cause a little excitement around these paragraphs!

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DID YOU MISS ME?

No, you don’t have to answer the title question…It is obvious that while I have been very busy and simply didn’t have the time or energy (more the latter) to pound out a substantive posting since December 21st (egads!), you were likewise.  I have one last posting to complete “The Big Move”series I began last year, but it will take a little more time because I am still spending most of my day unpacking the gazillion boxes sitting in just about every room of our new house. At the end of each day I am in no mood to tackle a session at the computer.  So please hold onto your hat if you still wear one, and I will be back on course shortly.

Meanwhile, I have been getting unusual feedback to a posting on the TV show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  Why unusual? Because the posting was last February, almost a year ago.  But the search engines must be active and leading folks to the posting.  So, just for grins while I get back up to speed, here’s the piece on marvelous Mrs. M…

THE F*BOMBING OF MRS. MAISEL

Posted on February 1, 2019by Marc Kuhn

Well, here I go again with another dissertation on the F*Bomb.  It’s like I can’t get it out of my system….or maybe it should be that I can’t get it in.

I thought I’d inch my way back into the popular arts this evening.  This is a place that I have pretty much abandoned once I retired, at least when the venue is television.  My temporary re-entry was made up of watching three episodes of an amazon prime series titled, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This program has piled up an overflowing mantle of awards, including three Golden Globes, a SAG Award, and six Primetime Emmies.  The writer-director  of the series is Amy Sherman-Palladino who also gave us The Gilmore Girls.  I thought I had done a good job selecting what promised to be an outstanding series.  I thought.

Now comes the troublesome part.  I’ve confessed this before so some will find this posting to be a here-he-goes-again moment.  I have, let’s call it “a sensitivity,” to the F*Bomb. I think this is a result of the culture in which I was raised.  I realize it is merely a word, a collection of letters placed in a specific order to form the word that represents the sound, F*ck.  Stay with me here.

During the 1950s, the word simply was NOT commonly used, at least in public and especially by women. I’ve thought long and hard about this and, NO, the F*Bomb was definitely NOT expressed back then as freely as it is today.  This brings me to the point at which I take issue with all the contemporary entertainment writers who insist on sprinkling the F*bomb throughout their scripts as if it were seasoning liberally applied from a saltshaker.  It is especially annoying when the script represents a time period like the 1950s, as does The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  I am not stupid.  Today’s crop of writers thinks it is cool and hip (there’s a word from the ‘50’s) to say F*ck in just about every paragraph, so much so that to someone like me it is beyond sounding provocative and simply sounds stupid and irritating.

Amy Sherman-Palladino is such a writer.  She was born in 1966.  She was not around in the 1950s and her perception of how people spoke back then is entirely WRONG. When her peers, and anyone younger, watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel they think nothing of the proliferation of F*bombs.  When someone my age is exposed to her writing, it loses all credibility and is actually insulting.  She may just as well place a cell phone in every actor’s hand as they role-play what they think is representative of the time period in which Mrs. Maisel takes place.

Now certainly, it is ballsy (how do you like that word?) of me to criticize Ms. Sherman-Palladino when she is a super successful writer and I remain a starving one.  But I am upset.  I wanted to get involved with a good series—an award-winning series—and have something to look forward to watching over the next several weeks. But, after viewing three full episodes, I left in the midst of an entirely unbelievable stretch of a scene in which a sober Mrs. Maisel auto-programs herself to suddenly do stand-up at a wedding. Her performance rivals any routine by shock comedian Andrew Dice Clay, to the extent that she asks the wedding’s attending priest to declare to everyone that she did not “stoke” him.  It is a scene that is simply unreal, one that is the product of a writer not familiar with the time period, period! And, no one, except a wonky critic like me, would make a fuss about it because it abruptly breaks the rhythm of what was otherwise a compelling performance.

Maybe I am a prude and do not wish to admit it.  But hey, my one book has a naked lady on the cover.  How much of a snoot can I be?  It is just that the F*bomb has become so much a part of our contemporary language that it can be heard anywhere at anytime by anyone.  My children and grandchildren use it freely all the time, whether I’m present or not.  The problem comes to life when a writer decides to overwhelm you with it.  Good writers pull and tug at every word in their scripts, always questioning whether or not a word is the correct one, does it serve a purpose, does it belong? Too often the F-bomb gets an unearned “yes” for each of these questions.

Imagine for a moment if The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel went through its entire season without once dropping the f*bomb.  I bet it would have still won three Golden Globes, a SAG Award and six Primetime Emmies.  Kah-boom!

****

A STRANGE CHRISTMAS

Strange. Everything this year seems upside-down.  Yep, that’s what it is, strange.  We’re having a strange Christmas.  Never ever had one like this.  There are no decorations, no tree (that’s last year’s in the picture), no lights on the bushes outside. Nope, nothing, nada, zilch.  Strange…uh-huh.

The house has been sold.  We closed on it yesterday, although the new owners have allowed us to still live here until the 30th. That is very unusual and very kind of  them to let us stay.  Even so, we will still be in a few days’ limbo since we don’t move into our new home until January 3rd.  Do you realize how strange (oh, there’s  that word again) it feels to suddenly be living in the house you have owned for 23 years and you no longer own it?  We’re renters!  Well, at least for the next ten days.

The grandkids–all but two–will be here Christmas Eve.  Traditionally, we always get each one of them a pair of pajamas.  It is the one present they are allowed to open on Christmas Eve. The two elder girls are living in Jacksonville…all grown up and learning what it’s like going to work every day so you can take care of the rent and groceries and maybe have a little left over to buy Christmas decorations.  They’ll get their gifts via USPS. And that’s about it…

Rosemarie and I are going to a good friend’s house on Christmas Day.  On Christmas every year our friend takes in a collection of non-Christmasers for a night of good food and drink.  Some are Jewish, of course, but I suspect there may be a few St. Nick vagabonds whose wayward lifestyle has them mumbling “bah-humbug” this time of year.  However, knowing my friend as I do, I am willing to bet that the Christmas Spirit–regardless of how you may link to it–will prevail by night’s end.

Yessiree, they’ll be swiggin’ bottles of ho-ho-ho by early evening.  Christmas Spirit can do that to you.  It’s non-denominational, non-discriminatory, non-sectarian.  It sort of helps ease the non-normal feel of  this year’s holiday.  Rosemarie and I will be in our house that we do not own anymore.  Most everything has been packed away in boxes that are stacked everywhere.  Nowhere are there any decorations, nor Christmas tree.  And there are no twinkling lights on the bushes outside…strange!

*****

 

 

 

THE BIG MOVE KEEPS ON MOVIN’

Well, gather around everyone, I have an update on The Big Move.  I just know there are at least a gazillion people wanting to hear wazzup with our Florida coast-to-coast transition.  Lots happening since I last discussed this incredible journey of changing home sites after 23 years.   Talk about a rollercoaster ride, this trip has been wild.  Last we met, we had sold our house on the  east coast of Florida and signed a contract for one on the west coast.

Now, if you have ever purchased a home you know that it is recommended that you hire an inspector to go through the entire property, top to bottom, including a check on all systems like plumbing and  electricity.

That will cost you on the average somewhere  between $300-$500, depending on the size of the house and how much  work is  involved.  In a brief moment of insanity, I actually considered forgoing the inspection but  my realtor brought me to my senses…and a good thing he did.  If the inspection turns up anything significant the buyer can negotiate a “fix” with the seller or choose to walk away from the deal.  Our inspector discovered three things, each of which had nightmare potential.  We aborted the mission and began looking for another house.  Two  weeks later we found a newer, better house than the first one.  We signed another  contract, had a successful inspection and we are due to move in right after New Year’s.  Sometimes things are, as they say, just meant to be.  Okay, it’s back to packing…     

*****

 

SAY WHAT?

Writer’s Digest is one of the more influential magazines in the book writing industry.  If you take writing seriously you already have, or should have, a subscription. What I like about Writer’s Digest is that it is one of the few in the industry that recognizes the value and legitimacy of independent (self-published) authors.

Writer’s Digest sponsors a Self-Published Book Awards competition each year.  I have entered several times, as do hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other independent authors. For some incredibly strange circumstance, I have never won(!)  I came a little close, I think, with my book, DEAD LETTER, which scored perfect 5’s in every category except one: the cover.  I think the judge who reviewed my book took exception to the naked lady on the cover and gave it a 4, probably taking the book out of consideration.

One thing special about Writer’s Digest is that the judges in the various competitions it sponsors are required to provide the  entrants with a review of their submitted work.  It is always good for a writer to get professional feedback, good or bad.  Sometimes I prefer the bad stuff because it gives me something upon which to improve.

My book titled, AGAIN, was my most recent entry in the Writer’s Digest competition.  Earlier, AGAIN took first place honors in the 2019 Independent Book Awards.  Meanwhile, it scored the least amount of points of any of my past entries in the Writer’s Digest contest–all 3’s and 4’s. That was a little discouraging, since this book was my 11th effort and one would think I might be improving by now. But what was most troubling was that I did not understand what the judge was trying to say about the book.  There are one or two sentences in her review that totally baffle me.  I have read them repeatedly and I still cannot figure out what the judge is saying.  I admit, I am a rather plain spoken individual and when the words get too big and the thoughts too complex, my pragmatic brain has a meltdown.  I call upon any of  you to read a portion of the judge’s comments and if you can interpret them for me, I would be most appreciative.  Just leave a comment below.  Here is some of what she said (the challenging parts are highlighted in bold text):

“Before I even started reading AGAIN, the concept of the story had me hooked. There is so much potential in the idea of not time travel or strict reincarnation, but some cross between the two. Kuhn uses emotion to carry both main storylines through without tangling them together to the point that the reader is no longer following. It’s clear that he did his research on the decades he was working with, but he never got so technical that he would lose the casual reader along the way.

What I think could have been improved would be the ways in which Kuhn’s actual syntax and tone played off of one another. At times the dialogue was overly formal, while his exposition borderline simple and opaque. It made for a jarring combination in explanations of day-to-day activities, such as Richard and Patricia moving forward with their lives after Richard comes home from war, and in emotional plot points – Richard coming off the plane and being reunited with his girlfriend, for example.”

Well, so much for clarity.  I sure hope one of you can ‘splain it to me.  I appreciate the judge taking the time to react to my book and puttng forth what I take as constructive criticism.  I will go back and check to see if there is a way of contacting her and politely ask for further explanation.  In the meantime I am stilll working on my acceptance speech for when I win a Pulitzer.  I just hope I am around to deliver it.

*****

UNBROKEN NEWS FROM THE HOMEFRONT

Headline:  The Move is On!

The  summer/fall saga of our Big Move continues.  Actually it is beginning its final phase and things are just going swimmingly.  In just a few weeks Rosemarie and I will move after 23-years of living in our home on the east coast of South Florida.  A new family is buying  our house.  They have twin boys, age 7, and I am so pleased because this is the perfect house for a  young family.  They are as excited as we are as they look forward to living in their new home.  And that is exactly what Rosemarie and I are excited about too. We closed a deal over the weekend and by the end of the year we will be living in Naples on the west side of South Florida. As the saying goes…don’t you just love it when a plan comes together!

Now comes the hard part: the final packing and purging.  We have some furniture we have to sell and lots of stuff to toss when Rosemarie isn’t looking.  She is the hoarder, I the purger.  It’s an ongoing battle between us when it comes to  reducing our worldly goods!  We are going from over 2100 square feet down to 1350.  So there will be a lot of “stuff” not making the trip.  Trouble is, about 75% of it is already packed so we will have to wait until we unpack to have a purge party.  After 23 years of living in the same house I am sure you can imagine all the things you accumulate.

Headline:  11-Year-Old Embarrasses 74-Year-Old

She is 11 years old. She lives next door and has for several years.  Her name is…is…is–well, that’s the  problem.  I forget what her name is. I remember asking her father to remind me. He did. It was good for the  moment, but then I forgot it again.  So  the other evening she ran up to me with a copy of one of my books that I had given her a year or two ago.  She asked me to sign it.  Usually when an author signs a book in this situation, he would write “To–whomever.”  Trouble is, my feeble memory could not pull out this particular “whomever,” even if my next bowl of ice cream counted on it.  I simply wrote a short sentence or two and signed it.  That was wrong.  I spent the rest of the day beating myself up over it.  I  should have been honest and  admitted I forgot her name.  So, what to do?   Today, when I  see her, I will tell her to go get her book.  Then I will fess up, ask her for her name and add it above what I wrote.  Oh the guilt an 11 year-old-can meticulously embed in your soul.

Headline:   Feelin’ Good!

I have heard plenty of horror stories about people who have had spinal surgery.  That is why I had put up with with so much pain for four years while attempting to find a cure for my achy breaky back. I had nerve blocks, pain pills, people walk on my back, witch doctors rattle beads over it, etc. etc. Nothing helped. I was in agony.  Finally, I gave in and went to a spinal clinic where I met the great Dr. Asghar.  He showed me, me—the real me exposed in x-rays that featured my arthritic spine. It did not run straight up and down like it is supposed to.  Instead, it was one big “S” curve and some of  the vertebrae were rubbing against each other because the cartilage that was once between them was long gone.  So, on June 25th Dr. Asghar sliced a hole in the side of my body and dumped Home Depot into my lower back. Even as soon as I awoke in the recovery room the horrendous pain I had been living with for so long was G O N E !  I’ve had the usual healing sensitivities and other post-surgery annoyances since then, but nothing like before.  And about two weeks ago I came to realize I was feeling “normal.” It’s true, I told myself.  This is how I used to feel.  I am not taking it for granted, believe me.  I realize my arthritis hasn’t stopped its dirty deeds, but for now I feel great and I shall sit up, stand up, and bend over every day and appreciate that I can not only do these movements once more, but that I can do them pain-free.

Well, that’s all the news from my little household here in South Florida.  By the way, NOW is the time to visit here. The weather is spectacular this time of year and will continue so until around April.  And it’s even quieter too since the hum of air conditioners seems to have all but disappeared.  Cool!

*****

TIME FOR A LITTLE MR. R

There is a function on Apple computers, at least it’s on my iMac, that is called “Force Quit.” It is similar to the old combo of “Control-Alt-Delete” found on most PCs.  I really like Force Quit (FQ) because it takes no prisoners. Whatever you instruct FQ to shut down, it immediately terminates the program–Bam!  No questions asked. It is the ultimate “go to time-out” button and if you are the entity on whose behalf FQ was activated, well then, you may as well immediately surrender, grab your stuff and get out. Force Quit…it’s a force to be reckoned with!

Right now, the world is in such chaos I wish I had a huge, earth-wide Force Quit button I could push and everyone and everything would simply shut down.  The political divisiveness in America would pause; the random mass shootings at retail stores and schools across the USA would cease; those guiltless phone calls threatening you with an IRS investigation wouldn’t interrupt your day; teargas and bricks would no longer be the exchange currency in Hong Kong; the energy it takes to initiate all the unfair and unnecessary mistreatment of refugees and immigrants around the world would turn positive and begin building new relationships and locations where all these people could finally call home.  The list goes on. It is sad that it is such a long one. Just as one generation deals with all its dilemmas–few of which ever get resolved–along comes the next set of offspring and their bag of disasters.   This culture has truly become the circle of life on our little planet. It needs one of us to push the Force Quit button and disrupt its orbit.

Human beings are an odd lot. We are capable of performing incredible acts of kindness and generosity; we can instruct a little wheeled cart to land on Mars and send us photographs of its travels; we can build all kinds of useful structures in which to live and work; we can learn ways to alleviate pain and disease.  Fact is, humans can do most anything if they put their minds to it.  What we can’t seem to do is get rid of our ugliness–all those evil, vengeful, selfish, hateful things we do to each other.   It is a puzzlement how we can be so good and so bad at the same time.         

I do not think there is an answer to this riddle.  I think we are who we are and parents, teachers, the clergy and society as a whole do not have the influence on us that we all think they do…or wish they did.  I was just reading about the new Tom Hanks movie about Mr. Rogers.  When I first heard this movie was in the making it wasn’t on my list of things to do, but now that I’ve read a little more about it, it seems the entire world should buy a ticket and go see it.  I doubt Mr. Rogers would ever push the Force Quit button. Days in his neighborhood were always beautiful and I think he had a lot to do with that.

 

*****

 

THE GREAT MOVE…HALFWAY THERE

If you have been following Marc’s Blog since mid-summer you may have caught one of my postings on “The Big Move.”  After  23 years in our current house, Rosemarie and I decided to uproot ourselves and become pioneers in the wilderness…well, I suppose South Florida can sometimes be interpreted as the wilderness.  We accepted an offer on our house today which means we are halfway through the process: one house sold, now one to buy.  More on that later.

I refer to us as pioneers because, for the first time in our lives, we do not know where we are going. We’ve always been super organized, acutely aware of our compass heading and never without a plan.  We have none of those things this time.  I look at it as a great adventure.  Rosemarie views it as a disaster that has given her more angst than raising teenagers. She’s not happy right now…too perplexed. She needs a timetable, a GPS heading and knowing she has enough gas to get there.

Actually we have a rough idea of where our next home will be.  It’s just a two-hour drive across “Alligator  Alley” which is the highway that runs east-west between the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida on the east, and Naples on the west.  We have visited several communities in the Naples area, one of which will more than likely be where we find our new home.

So why did we undertake such a monumental mission at our age?  We are both retired and should pretty much have a carefree outlook on the years ahead.  Well, that is exactly what we are doing–looking ahead, but with  our eyes focused and our minds clear on what is important.  Two things influenced our decision. I suspect there are many people going through the same process.  We looked at our expenses and realized if one of us was no longer here, it would be a rough ride for the one remaining.  It made sense to reduce our cost of living to the level where half our current income could keep up. Reason #2 was a lot easier.  It had to do with pain and the increasing amount both Rosemarie and I are experiencing going up and down the stairs in our two-story house.  A one-story house would serve us a lot better.

Our  house has been on the market for just over eight weeks.  We have had a constant flow of potential buyers, one or two silly offers, but nothing we paid much attention to…until this weekend.  We wound up hosting a bidding war between offers, one local and one from another state.  One was texted to our agent at 2:30 in the morning.  One offer screamed loud and clear, “accept me!”  So we did.  And now we have a budget for the new house and a specific date for leaving this one.  Rosemarie is a little happier.  I’d say we’re halfway there.

*****

 

INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN, KNOWINGLY

This is turning out to be a year of big changes with unknown destinations.  I had no idea back in January that I’d be sitting here in October wondering where I will be living by the end of the year.  Our decision to sell our home of 23 years came in late summer.  It was motivated by economics and health.  We need to be ready for tougher times when social security checks are strained and maybe even reduced and stairs to the second floor get even tougher to climb than they are now.

The house is up for sale with much of its drawers and closets and cabinets empty of their usual contents which now sit in boxes stacked in the garage.  The movers are standing by, as is the realtor on the other side of the state who is waiting for us to arrive, check in hand, to buy a new home in any of two or three communities we have already screened.

Meanwhile, if that is not enough to handle, I have made some major decisions to abandon much of what I have been doing the past ten years in my retirement.  I have written 11 books.  I’ve kept up this blog, having published over 640 postings in seven years. I have created and maintained ten websites.  Physically, I’ve had two knee replacements and a hardware store dumped into my lower spine.

It has been an active, and sometimes daunting, retirement.  But much of this, too, is about to change.  I have shut down all but one of the websites and I have more than likely published my last book.  What will I do with my time now?  Well, like moving our home, I’m not sure.  I might take guitar lessons, walk the dog more or maybe catch up on some movies…or something entirely unknown to me right now.

For one who has always been compulsive and overly organized with a fine-tuned compass, all this change without knowing in what direction I’m going is a radical transition in personality.  But that is what I have learned about retirement.  It is an entirely different state of mind.  The race is over, other than to keep up with my health and just keep on keepin’ on.  There is no career move to ponder; no more formal education or training sessions; no more chasing down salary increases (those are missed!) and basically no more material lures to lust after except maybe a winning lottery ticket.

So it has become easy to give things up, replace them with other things or even remain thingless.  I don’t think I will do the latter.  If one thing is certain, I must be doing something to keep my mind active.  I am not one to sit still, so I am, indeed, curious as to where all this will lead.  Cue Dylan…How does it feel to be on your own, With no direction home, A complete unknown, Like a rolling stone?  It feels okay.

*****