Gadzooks

So, I've never really been AFRAID of a car before, but Florence bought herself a Mercedes Benz a few years ago, and has barely driven it herself anywhere.  This car is unbelievable.  There are so many gadgets and buttons and gizmo's and fancy schmancy things on this car, I'm almost afraid to drive it anywhere.  I mean, there's an actual DVD player right there on the front dashboard!  I've never seen such a thing in my life.  It is surreal almost, considering I've always had DODGE NEONs, ya know?!  So today I drove her car for the first time since we brought it back from her home in Rochester NY, and luckily I didn't do anything bad to it.  I'm a nervous wreck driving it though, how the hell could I ever repair a $40,000 car if anything bad happened to it?!! EGAD!!

But, Florence loves it, and is glad to have it here so that we can take her places in it.  Normally I would call it a "Hitler-mobile," because the Mercedes-Benz company was one of many companies that used Jewish slave-labor during the Holocaust, along with Volkswagon and Ford.  Personally, I will never own those brands of cars, just for that reason.  Some argue that "those cars are the best thing Hitler ever created or played a role in," (along with the Autobahn), but I say I'm not going to perpetuate his legacy, I don't care how "good" it may be considered in our modern day world.  Same with IBM.  I know the history of those companies, and I simply do not agree with the way they operated back then, so I'm not going to give them my money for anything.  I'm just weird that way.

Ah well, it's a nice car, I do admit that.  But holy hannah, do you REALLY need all those extra gadgets?!  Just seems....superfluous to me.  

Well anyway, Florence has had a bit of a difficulty in returning from Rochester. She started spinning off on some tangent and would NOT let it go.  Now, whenever that happens, we tell her that she is having a bipolar problem, (she is understanding bipolar more and more), and that we need to pray to God when that occurs so that she can rest her mind a bit, and let HIM take over and fix the problem. She seems relieved whenever we do that, so I'm going to keep doing it as long as it works.  She just starts getting confused about one little tiny thing and blows it up huge in her mind into this major crisis, and keeps going over and over and over it like a broken record.  She was obviously overwhelmed while we were in Rochester, and the long drive back took its toll on her, she was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. So we are not going to take any long road trips with her for the rest of the summer.  Any family member who wants to see her will have to drive to US here in Pittsburgh to visit with her. 

We are going to start a web site with photos and a "newsletter" about Florence, that will probably start out on Facebook.  Pete decided this would be a good way for all the family members in other states to keep track of her and what she's doing and who's visiting, etc.  You can check out our Facebook pages by typing in our names "Pete Hoch" and "Rebecca Gray." I've hooked up with many high school friends on there, and it's fun to keep in touch and have lots of old pictures of younger days to share and comment on, etc., so we both like Facebook a lot.

My book is in the process of being reformatted by Pete, and once that is done, we'll have it ready for publishing. We may just go with Amazon.com and self-publish it on our own.  That is fine with me, I know the expense of doing this is not exactly great timing with all the other things going on around us right now, so we'll keep everyone posted.  He is almost done with it, so instead of my original plan to have it be 8.5 x 11 inches and almost 40 pages, it's going to be shorter, smaller, and nearly 80 pages.  I'm looking forward to sharing the book with everyone once it's done, which will hopefully be soon.

Well, that's the news for now.  I'll write more soon.  Love, Becky