I miss long walks - walking just to walk, walking to get places because I didn't have a car (this was loooong ago), walking to visit a friend. Now I walk "for exercise" and I allot myself 30 minutes max. I have to fit these walks in between ironing, work, cleaning, work, cooking, work and work.

I miss living with a large family. Yeah, they were always there and noisy to boot but, sometimes, we had a lot of fun.

I miss free time. Nuff said.

I miss playing the guitar. I miss having time to practice all my instruments.

I miss the me I was at 12 and at 26, even at 30. I was full of hope and the world lay before me. Now that I've passed half a century, the world stills lies before me but traveling is slower and arthritis slows me down.

Once I was skinny. I miss that, too.

Things I miss:

I miss the huge fir tree in our neighbor's back yard. It shaded our yard so that nothing would grow and it shed cones and branches every time the wind blew. But it roared in storms and it sheltered owls and bats. I was glad to see it go. But now I miss it.
I miss my mother-in-law. She didn't like me much for at least 20 years. She criticized almost everything my husband and I did. But then she grew older and more mellow and she was a support and a friend. Now she's gone and I miss her.
Having a dog - I miss that. Not enough to run out and adopt one though. I miss having her greet me when we came home. I miss feeling safe when my husband was away at night, knowing that the dog was there to bark and growl. I miss hearing her flop down on the rug with a hearty sigh. Dogs are good. I miss ours.
I miss having a child in the house. I miss spontaneous laughter because kids find things immensely amusing. I miss playing. Grown-ups forget how to do that. I miss sharing deep thoughts and being amazed and humbled by just how deep a child's thoughts can be. I miss having someone to sing with and jam with in the kitchen. He just got married and I miss the child that he was.

More things I miss in another post.

I think that weddings, and other "rites of passage" like Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and Graduations, are designed to make sure that people cannot think of anything else for weeks at a time. If your brain is completely taken up with flower arrangements and catering and color swatches, etc., there's no way you can do anything that will disrupt the status quo. Revolutions have been stalled by wedding invitations. "Oh, sorry, I can't overthrow the government THAT weekend. My son is getting married." Inventions were conceived and then forgotten because someone had to deal with the parking problem.
Fortunes that could have been made by investing that extra thousand are lost because the cousin who promised to take pictures had a skiing accident and is in traction.
It's part of the "Keep people busy and in debt" strategy of Big Business (you can tell that Big Business is Sinister because I am using capital "B"s) and Big Business's counterparts, Organized Religion and the (dum dum DUM...) Military - Industrial Complex.
Yep, you THINK it's just your graduation but it's really part of an Evil Plot. There's my Random Thought of the Day.

Thomson Gale, a publisher of non-fiction and reference titles, held a GREAT contest. They invited librarians and library lovers everywhere to submit videos to the following site on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=LIBRAREO. The contest got over 140 submissions. Now some of them are just cheerleading for libraries. Some of them are - well - amateurish but some of them are superb. YouTube also highlights other library videos. Check out Betty Glover's Library Fitness video. It's a bit insulting to librarians, especially academic librarians but it's funny! I wonder when it was made because it looks pretty darn 80's.
BEA tomorrow - Well actually today, tomorrow and Sunday but I'm making my yearly pilgrimage tomorrow. I can NOT wait. BookExpo is the BEST thing a book lover like me can do. Check out Book Expo's website - www.bookexpoamerica.com - to see a tiny little bit of what I'm talking about. Authors, books, and freebies - oh yeaaah!