DOAEN 6: The Bottom Line
I keep reminding myself to vist FemiMacus and write a check for the $25.00 that I owe them for last week's pedicure. Remarkably, they do not accept ATM or credit cards and I had no checks with me at the time, having finished writing all my monthly bills and since I do not subscribe to an online banking service, my last Luddite holdout because for some reason I am convinced that my account numbers will be hacked by hucksters; well, you know what I'm trying to say here. I'm feeling guilty and need to go by Park Avenue one day this week to clear both my name and reputation from the soapy registers of local manicure parlors.

"What's the big deal," you maybe ask. Black marks weigh heavily upon my personal credit record. And I can't stop being a throwback to another century when there were standards of acceptable behavior that weren't updated online every hour by the local Webmaster. Certain precepts were chiseled in stone way back then: the Ten Commandments, the golden mean about doing unto others, playing fair and square, and so forth, phrases that are broken links now to another seemingly innocent place and time. Now I keep up, subscribing to lists so I can stay abreast of new content. I also read daily cascades of email that arrive at no special hour in my ever expanding and contracting mailbox that would even overwhelm the Queen of Contractions, Martha Graham. I am on an unending treadmill that ceases only when I deliberately refuse to take my laptop along for the ride, which doesn't happen often, because I actually enjoy this electronic high.

"So what are you whining about?" you maybe ask. Well, I'm not so much whining as reflecting, which was Hamlet's big hang-up although he lacked a good Sunday morning breakfast of coffee, eggs and potatoes. It's what I do best, given my job that keeps me in front of a computer for most of the day with occasional breaks for rides on the elevator. But today isn't like that at all, Virginia. Today I'm thinking about my weekend, this unbelievable thing that has happened in my life which stands outside the doors of email. Something that has caused me to believe that love possibly can exist in this world, or that maybe I've done enough leg work and taken enough Pilates classes to know the real thing when I feel it, which is my bottom line.

To be continued (I hope).