My Little Golden Book of Phobias

The room is freezing, there are three hot air balloons outside and we are four in this room. We're remarkably polite to each other. My bedmate snores but I'm sworn to secrecy about her identity. Besides, her snores are so cute and as my mother would say, lady-like. Very Southern, actually. Little snorts and sighs. I'm no longer interested in food. We went Italian last night. There were several bottles of wine and mountains of pasta. Mountains. We ate 'family style' so the platters kept coming. I can only eat so much.

It was all midwives, eleven of us. First we told the story of our name, then we went around and told the story of our birth. Then we told jokes, mostly dirty. We were making so much noise I'm sure it was a good thing that we were in a separate room far away from the main dining room. Besides being midwives we are an ocean of talent. We're writers, actors, musicians, painters and flower arrangers. This is important because we might have to retire and then we'll have something else to do.

And that's all for now.

Instead of sitting in the freezing room and listening to another speech, I'm going for a walk. There's a mall, a retirement village and a business park. Fortunately, there are birds and more crickets and sun.