THANKS TO Elaine Kehoe at TEA LEAVES for this award

Now to the hard part of receiving an award, coming up with seven things about myself for the world to read.  Here goes: 

1.  I am a pirate at heart and mind and enjoy doing all sorts of things.  I am also an old pirate. 

2.  Believe it or not I've been married for 37 years and spawned a beautiful, accomplished daughter, who has given us 3 great grandchildren, and my always interesting son, himself a pirate. (see RI PIRATE PLAYERS). 

3.  I've had many strange and interesting jobs over the years, not the least being my 16 years as an attorney.  I've also had some real boring ones, but always seemed to be surrounded by interesting people. 

4.  I do a lot of sort of things like:  sort of play the piano, sort of knit (see PIRATE KNITTING), sort of write and sort of get paid.  

5.  I've been sort of blogging for a few years and have met some great people and read some really nice things throughout blog challenges, GBE2, Blog Park etc.  

6.  You meet many people in 62 years, some of who are friends for a time, some drift away and some stay as friends forever.  I am lucky to have at least 3 of those friends forever (BFF), one of whom is my husband. 

7.  I have been lucky in many things and am gambling that luck continues. 

Now the good part, my nominees for this award:

Frizzy (what is your name?):  http://ibfrizzy.blogspot.com/

Mary Anne: http://www.writewrongorindifferent.com/

Beth (of course and always):  http://www.word-nerd-speaks.com/

Joyce Paull Lansky:  http://joycelansky.blogspot.com/

Jo Heroux:  http://jo-mywanderingmind.blogspot.com/

November Rain: http://bloggitwrite.blogspot.com/

Claudia Moser:  http://cnovac.blogspot.com/

Laurie Peel: http://earthdragonhealing.blogspot.com/

Langley Cornwall: http://langley-writes.blogspot.com/

Jenn Duffy-Pearson:  http://www.wine-n-chat.com/

Gill Taber:  http://mojowritin.blogspot.com/

PIRATES DON'T WORK OR VOLUNTEER!!!

Written for GBE2

 Well, this pirate has actually done both, work for pay and piles of volunteer work. As with many people, my first paying job was when I was 16 and I was a library messenger at the Providence Public Library downtown. Because I was working for a nonprofit they could pay under minimum wage at the time, lucky me. (So I was sort of volunteering). My paid jobs have gone from library messenger, secretary, medical transcriptionist, attorney, and now, sometimes I get paid for writing.

 However, some of my most interesting and fun work has been volunteer work. At 14, I was a candy striper (not the stripper you might expect from a pirate) at a local hospital. I worked in the pharmacy which was fun and made me want to be a pharmacist until I took chemistry and realized that wasn't going to happen. I came from a family that embraced volunteerism, my mother eventually becoming President of the Rhode Island YWCA. My parents took in refugees from Europe in the 1950s and did many other things pro bono, that's "attorneyspeak" for free. This stuck with me.

 While I always needed to have a paying job, I spent many interesting hours knitting hats and making meatballs for school bazaars; running fundraisers; and even was a Girl Scout Brownie leader for a year (pirates do not make good Brownie leaders!). In this period of my life with a newborn, a 5 year old and a husband overseas, I met many good friends through this "work".

 This blog is not about a pirate turned good person, (that never happened, still a pirate) but it is rather about the fact that some of the most fascinating work and people can be found in the volunteer sector. As an attorney, I did my pro bono through the bar association and elderly affairs being a guardian for people whose families were either living off them or disappeared. I enjoyed helping these folks through probate court. I also loved working with Lawyers in the Arts helping artists and creative folks with intellectual property issues. Once again I benefited the more than the clients from this work by meeting some great people and entering lives I would not have otherwise seen.

 Today, too crazy to be a lawyer any more and trying to make some money writing, i.e. retirement to some, I am back at the library. This time as a volunteer, shelving books and meeting people in our very diverse local branch. This is excellent exercise and a great way to find books you might not have thought to take out, but the pay is even lower the before, just plain 0, but the world opened by volunteering is "priceless". Or in pirate terms, that's something with ARRH  booty!

THE ART OF A SENSE OF WONDER

Written for GBE2.

Everyone wonders about something at some time; usually it is mundane things like "Do they really do anything in Congress?", "Why do you hit 'start' to close down your computer?", "Why do you have new updates immediately after updating about any electrical device?, etc. Of course my favorite for the last couple of months is wondering "How a newborn can be so peacefully asleep until you start to walk to bed and then is as awake as a Starbucks addict?"

A sense of wonder is a different thing altogether and all children have it. This is a sense of being so surprised and excited by the world around you that that the joy and wonder show on your face. My 4 year old grandson showed a small example of this as we walked into his garage and were hit by a strong wind, he stated, "Wind, I didn't expect that!" He nailed it on the head, the sense of the unexpected and marveling at the surprises of the day.

As a really older person, I have come to hope that I can keep artfully holding on to my sense of wonder. As you travel through life and have many experiences, a large majority of them repeated, I believe you become blasé and too sophisticated for "wonder". I try daily to guard against that and try to see things with "new eyes". I was lucky to be there before my granddaughter was born in November and have the wonder at her looking up at me a day after she had been travelling solely with mom. The wonder of birth is easy, though, most people are touched by that.

I like to sharpen my sense of wonder on the HUGE snow globe on someone's lawn or the pink flamingoes at city hall, a stranger being unexpectedly courteous, a friend saying something you never realized about them in all the years you've known each other and my husband being truly pleased with a gift I gave him. As we boomers get older we need to try as hard as possible to hold onto our sense of wonder or we will lose a major component in the enjoyment of life.

MERRY CHRISTMAS READERS.