Adventures in Panama

Not sure if you are ready for this, but in perusing my messy photo files I came upon this rather marvelous photo of My Mom, Dad and Me taken in 1936 when we spent 6 months living in the Panama Canal Zone.  Aren't we gorgeous?
(And don't forget, my Mamma had the most exquisite bright red hair, just a shade darker than copper wire and just as electrifying.)

I had not intended to go into this subject right now, but, having found the photo at enormous effort I decided I had better fetch it  out and stuff it into a draft blog while I had it in my grasp so to speak.  And now that I am gazing at it fond memories keep erupting all over the place so I guess I am stuck with doing a feature on our idyllic 6 month stay in, what was for us, a very exotic and exciting place.

In 1936 my Dad was given the opportunity to relocate to The Panama Canal Zone to participate in a project to build a settlement for some of the Canal Workers in Panama.  (My Dad was an Architect, Engineer and Naval Architect and was sent down by the Navy Yard In Philly where he was employed).  The whipped cream and cherry on the cake was the fact that he was encouraged to take his family with him as part of the arrangement...(transportation via a 6 day journey by ship was free).  Being extremely ingenious and aggressive, Pappy was able to locate an American resident of the canal zone who was about to return to the US on a sabbatical and arrange to rent their house while they were gone.  Naturally he had managed to find one of the more senior residents whose seniority entitled them to a fantastic near mansion in the nicest part of the Zone.  Holy Moly.....not only a sea voyage (my first ever), but a posh residence and, for us, the most exotic local imaginable.......a heavenly gift for sure.

I was in the 4th grade at the time.  Fortunately, because I was very bright and at the top of my class, leaving before the semester was quite finished and attending school in Panama in the fall until we returned was no problem.  Off we went in May just after my 9th birthday and I was out of my head with excitement over the prospect of this amazing experience.  For someone who had hardly ever been out of West Philly (not counting brief excursions to Pittsburgh and Atlantic City....max distance 200 miles) it was like being transported to the Moon or Mars, and the reality was hardly less fantastic than interstellar travel.  The Canal Zones on each coast of the Isthmus of Panama were  U.S territories.  Panama City which abutted the Zone on the Pacific side, which is where we were bound, was just a few miles journey by car or Jitney (the taxis of the area) and was almost primitive and totally exotic by our standards.  And, a few miles by car in a different direction plunged you into the Jungle....no, I mean a real jungle with wild animals (mostly monkeys were seen) and gorgous wild birds. trees festooned with wild orchids and hanging vines ala Tarzan and leaf covered paths where you had to be nimble in order to avoid certain threats like snakes and armies of huge ants which, when they crossed the path could cause you to wait for 10 or 15 minutes till their ant caboose finally passed and you could safely continue on.  Those ants were biting fools and were NOT to be messed with epecially in the numbers making up their formidable 12 or 15 inch wide moving column (many carrying bits of cut leaves on their backs).  We would tramp for hours (with a knowledgable guide to keep us out of trouble) through thickets, over streams and along various paths hacked out of the brush with huge machetes......the Panamanian curved swords.  It was so different from West Philly it might as well have been on Mars and I was in 7th heaven.

And there was more....much more.  The weather was balmy, the sky was an incredible cerulean blue, breezes ruffled the palm trees and the tropical foliage and to put it mildly, life was good.   The Canal Zone enjoyed a number of lovely Government amenities, not the least of which was a large pleasure center which featured a cafe with a fantastic old fashioned soda fountain, a Commissary where you could purchase all your groceries at fab prices and an Olympic size swimming pool, the use of which was free to residents.  At the time I did not know how to swim, but I was crazy about the water and had already spent hours frolicking in the shallows of the Atlantic ocean getting shrivelled by long immersion any time we went to Atlantic City.  I could hardly wait to get into this huge pool and frolic thererin.....meanwhile, I spent time in the lesser heaven of the soda fountain imbibing incredible chocolate sodas and dreaming of dashing back and forth with gay abandon in the deep end of the pool.  Incidentally.....the weather was always warm and tropical so swimming season never ended.  The months from around November thru March were the rainy season and the rest of the year was very dry but it was always comfortably warm. 

I can already see that this narrative is going to need several blog chapters so I am going to publish this section and go see if I can locate some other photos from that idyllic period and I will pick up the story with my incredible experience of learning to swim......which, as you may have already guessed, was not in any way ordinary or normal..........mainly because my Father decided he would undertake the project of teaching me to swim and you should already know enough about my Father to be properly terrified on my behalf.  You can stop trembling.....I can reassure you that I did somehow survive.

More later.

Crutches Complicate Life

My beloved cousin Rob just had knee surgery and Jess, his wife sent an email to update interested parties about his condition. 

One of the advantages of being such an ancient person is the fact that you usually get to experience a lot of different things in a long life and can therefore empathize, sympathize and share about many aflictions and joys that your dear ones experience.  Also true regarding Knee Surgery so I decide to reply and offer a tip or two that I had learned during my own knee surgery a few years ago.

There are one or two difficulties one encounters when living alone as a sort of hermit.  There are also innumerable advantages, but, on the minus side, one of the very worst has been when I am on crutches for one reason or another and realize that I need a third if not a fourth arm and hand.  You never question the  design of  Humans with only 2 hands until you are on crutches and realize the degree of your helplessness.

Anyway, in my usually ruthless fashion I decided to give advice whether it was wanted or not and wrote the following email to Rob.  For anyone faced with the Crutch in their future it might be helpful to make a mental note of my suggestion.

Incidentally, my letter contains a brand new Family Note....I finally figured out something about who falls where among the generations of our family.  It only took me 82 years to figure out that, rather than really being an only child,  I have had symbolic brothers and a sister for years.  Oh, happy day !.
The photo shows Herself, Rob and my Mamma.
                                                                                                             

                                        ***************************************

Hi Jess and Rob

Thanks so much for keeping me in the loop on Rob's surgery. I am so glad it is over and that he is home and shlepping around, crutches or not. Oy, the sore armpits....I know, I know. I had knee surgery some years ago and the crutches were the worst part of it plus the inability to CARRY anything. Since the cats are absolutely worthless at bringing one glasses of water I had to devise a sort of bottle canteen hanging around my neck on a string in order to get available water to my bedside or chairside. (I have since substituted a fanny pack which can also carry spectacles, a pencil, book, phone and kleenex) In case Jess is not available, Rob, you should remember this ploy.....it is better than plucking helplessly at the coverlet and with swollen tongue calling piteously for Gunga Din. As I recall from my own experience, you will be mending soon and off to physical therapy in no time.

Good luck, darling and thanks for your lovely letter and compliments....I am touched and both proud and humbled that you think so highly of me. Incidentally.......I have just figured something out and it tickles me. When struggling with who came first, Evan or Oszcar or Max, I realized for the first time that you and I are actually of the same generation.....I just arrived a lot earlier than you , Deb and Bru. I have been saying that I feel like you guys are my children, but actually you are my brothers and sister and that is just how it feels. That is how my Mamma and your Dad and Lew felt about each other too.......she was just about the same number of years older than they were  (15). An interesting little side note to ponder on.

Heal, damn you, heal !!

Love, Lo

Hummingbird Wars

So there I stand at the kitchen sink, washing kitty dishes and getting ready to face the day with brain only one quarter stirring and engaged when I think I hear the sound of a jet engine in the little outside nook beyond my kitchen window.  Even one quarter brain registers this as highly improbable so I scrunch up my eyes to try to see better and I observe that it is NOT a plane nor is it Superman.....it IS a bird....in fact several birds.........hummingbirds, to be exact and they are whirring around and dueling like crazy with their rapier-like beaks, trying to establish which one of them actually owns the feeder that is affixed to my kitchen window.  The fact that there are 5 more feeders within a 6 foot radius doesn't matter to those voracious, contentious  little beasts.  Each one of the flock seems to want to own all of them......there is, apparently, no loving kindness among hummers........just greed. But they are so remarkable and so beautiful that I must forgive them.  I love watching them.  The picture below is not me....don't I wish....but one has to sit still for hours or days to get this to happen and I no longer have the patience.  However....ain't it grand?

When even my fat, but still hungry cats,   batting me about  the  face and neck with their paws and leaping with concrete-clad feet on my unprotected tummy cannot get me up to feed them, my thoughts that the hummingbirds are probably flying in circles and bashing into walls desperate for their nectar usually galvanizes (?) me into action and I stagger out of bed and into the kitchen.  Right now I have 8 feeders hanging at various places around my house and when I peer out each morning most of them are quite empty even though they all had contents when I went to bed the night before.  (Of course, the fact that I am one of those loathesome creatures who watches TV or reads until 4 am  and consequently does not stir until at least noon probably has something to do with it.  I have not been able to train the hummers to keep the same schedule.) But what I have done to somewhat solve the problem has been to send away to Ebay for an extra set of feeders so that I can fill at least the 4 extras at night before I go to bed so that they will be all ready to be plunked up on their hooks the moment I am ambulatory. 

It usually takes 10 or 15 minutes after I hang the full feeders before the little hysterics calm down, decide they cannot defend all the feeders at once and grudgingly settle down to feed at just one or two of them.  From that point there is generally at least one bird  outside my kitchen window guzzling away every 5 minutes or so throughout the daylight hours and even into the twilight. 

I often wonder what the hell they did before I started my Hummer Smorgasbord and somehow convinced all the neighbors to do the same.  These damned birds are now obviously the Rockefellers of the bird population due to our largesse.....were they on Welfare before I showed up??   Did they perch pitously on street corners with teensy signs that said "Will Hum or Whirr for Food"?  Somewhere I read that humingbirds cannot walk though I recently saw a documentary that showed one variety that hops like hell all over the flower strewn field to find their meal.  I also learned that they cannot survive on nectar alone and must get some protein via ingesting tiny bugs.  I must admit, I have never been able to observe them doing that and it is probably just as well because I might be driven to go out with some tiny net and attempt to capture some goodies for them.  My life as a handmaiden to critters is complicated enough without that, thank you.


One of these days I will stumble upon the photo I shot out of my window with one of my very own tribe and when I do I will publish it.  In the meantime, these will have to do.  Now I must go back to washing and filling feeding bottles.  Hummers don't come cheap, you know.

The Family Takes Over - featuring Aunt Mary, Uncle Sam and Mark

I have received some lovely encouragement regarding my musings about the earlier generations of the family and on the basis of that I am going to dig into my messy files and see if I can continue to reveal the Blumenthals in all their glory.  My brain is not of its usual tacklike sharpness tonite so I will coast along and try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Incidentally....I think it is ironic that I received no encouragement from family members directly or as comments on my blog.....but nooooooo......that would be too simple I guess.  One lovely bit of stroking came via email from Mary, a friend of my cousin Bruce Morton (Goldman), Aunt Mary's grandson.  She is a wonderful and remarkable lady who apparently takes more interest in Bruce's family than he does and I am tickled to be able to feed her interest and curiosity.  The other shout of  "more, please" came today from my cousin, Shoshana, who is granddaughter of Aunt Jenny's Bud and Great Granddaughter to the sainted Aunt Jenny.  She also happens to be the mother of the firstborn of the newest generation ***........Shosh and Mike Di Bennedetto have produced Max who was just 1 year old a bit ago and who happens to have been the first baby I have ever held in my long and adventurous life.  I must look for that photo of me holding Max to see if I can publish it here some day....such a milestone deserves to be preserved.  If I have lost it I hope that Shosh can supply me with a new copy.

The picture on the right is Aunt Mary and Uncle
Sam Goldman, either at the beach in Atlantic City or at a fake beach in some photographer's studio.  Don't know if they were already married or just courting, (I notice the rather proprietary arm of Aunt Mary draped across Uncle Sam's manly (or rather bony)  thigh so I suspect married or almost) but there they are for all to see.......in their bathing costumes yet.

Below on the left is Aunt Mary..........she was the prettiest one of the girls....I don't think anyone will argue about that and she had a sweet nature with a teensy bit more wildness than either Jenny or Mamie....I said just a bit.  After she and Uncle Sam married they moved to Atlantic City.....reasons unknown......and were not such frequent visitors as the members living in Philly, but A.C was only 60 miles away so they were present for all holidays and important occasions. Uncle Sam was an accountant....I do not know much more about him...... and they produced two children, first Selma and then Marcus  (Later to become Mark Morton).  One of the most enormous family tragedies occurred when Selma, on her honeymoon, contracted Spinal Meningitis and died after only a brief illness.  Aunt Mary never completely recovered, though she did quite well and thereafter poured all of her adoration into Mark.  He was a maverick like me.  First, he was absolutely gorgeous (unlike me).  Then he got hooked on body-building long before it was any kind of sport or lifestyle.  While a teen-ager in Atlantic City he became a Lifeguard and began lifting weights.  Then he took himself off to New York City to go to college at NYU..........acquired an equally gorgeous buddy named Hank and the two of them went about layering on as many muscles as a body could comfortably support.  They were really something to behold and I can only weep over the bodies of (figuratively) slain womankind that they surely left strewn in their wake as they swashbuckled around New York and Philly.  Somewhere around this time Aunt Mary and Uncle Sam moved back to Philly, a few blocks away from us and Aunt Mary would get all excited whenever Mark was coming home for the weekend.  "I've got to go to the Butcher, Mr Singer on 60th Street and get a big Pin Bone Roast.....Mark will be here for the weekend and he won't eat anything but roast beef," she would mutter.  (I still don't know exactly what a Pin Bone Roast was.....maybe a cross between Prime Rib and Sirloin)  Anyway.....Mark always got his beef.  Aunt Mary was a good cook and often would bring pans of some delectable doughy stuff to our house, put in on the radiator covers to rise and bake scrumptious goodies in our oven.  Oy, I can still smell it....... and taste it.......heaven.  She also made a mean Sponge Cake and some incredible muffin or bun type things that were savory not sweet, filled with ground meat, onions and spices.  Sigh, Gasp, Slobber.

Mark played the field and we wondered if he would ever find anyone he wanted to marry, but he happened upon the gorgeous Ruth.  It would  be easy to say that it was just the combination of beauty, brains, charm that did him in, but I heard that her parents owned a deli and it is my hunch that the lure of all that corned  beef may have had something to do with it too.  That pairing produced two lovely boys, Ken and Bruce.......the very Bruce whose pal, Mary, has encouraged me to write more about the family, so, Mary, consider that this is for you and Bruce.

On the right is a picture of the three sisters, Mary, Mamie and Jenny in their teens or perhaps early twenties.  When I said that Mary was the prettiest I forgot that in this picture Aunt Jenny also looked lovely........after all, she and Mary, though not identical twins, were twins nevertheless.  My grandma was not a beauty but she had all the family warmth and kindness.

This photo above is a rare and wonderful one.  It shows 3 generations of the Blumenthal women including a younger generation of offspring.  The younger generation includes my Mamma- Edna Kauffman, Selma Goldman, Charlotte Blumenthal (Uncle William's daughter) Mark Morton Goldman and Bert (Bud) and Lewis Kapnek - Aunt Jenny and Uncle Bill's boys.

Back row from left to right:
Selma Goldman, Charlotte (Uncle William's daughter), Aunt Rae (Uncle William's wife), Aunt Mary  Goldman.


Middle row:  My Mamma Edna Kauffman, my Grandma Mamie, GreatGrandma Sarah, Aunt Jenny Kapnek holding baby Lewis.

Seated in front are Mark Morton Goldman and Bud Kapnek. 

This is the only picture that has nearly the entire Blumenthal matriarchy and most of the children up to that time which I am  guessing was around 1920.  As you will  notice, my Mamma, Selma and Charlotte were much older than the Goldman and Kapnek boys.  I am guessing Mamma was about 14 here, Mark would have been around  7, Bud about  4 or 5 and Lew under 2.  The 3 girls of my Mamma's generation were tragically ill fated.  Selma, as I mentioned died on her honeymoon while in her twenties, Charlotte died of cancer in her early 30's and my Mamma died of cancer in her mid -fifties.  The rest of the family was remarkably long lived, most of them into their 80's and 90's.  One never knows what's in store for you and that is undoubtedly a good thing.

Now I must go and weep a few gentle tears for all of my beloved ancestors.

***Footnote: I was dreadfully mistaken when I said above that Shoshana had produced the first of a new generation.  I apologize abjectly to Bruce Morton whose adorable and remarkable son Evan is about 16 at this moment in time.  He was so far ahead of the new babies that I nearly forgot about him....but not for long.
Please forgive my lapse........Oy....so much to remember.....

Someone Said There Are No Coincidences

This is meant to be just a quickie....I wanted to pass on this idea while it was still hot in my brain and before I lapsed into that dreadful...."hmmm, what did I come in here for" condition that seems to come upon me from time to time these days.

There are some life lessons that are so powerful they seem to bubble up in minds scattered all over the place.  I have always felt that there are a certain number of important truths we are meant to learn in our lifetime.......we learn them not always in the same order and some of us don't learn many of them at all.   In fact, I believe there are too many to be learned in one lifetime.   My hope has been that we get other chances to learn the ones we missed this time around, but I guess  all we can do is the best we can.

Anyway, one of life's secrets came to me in a blinding flash during one of my most miserable times...... that that there are two words or concepts that can make the difference between a life of relative joy and one of pain and misery........very simply the ideas of ACCEPT and LET GO ALREADY.  Sounds easy.....NOT.....but, oh my, the difference it makes when you finally get it.  In fact, even knowing that it is the secret to happiness doesn't mean you can always keep a firm grip on it.....it has the habit of being elusive sometimes until you can unclench your teeth and your fingers and allow some long clutched but faulty idea to drop from your clawed fingers.  Then the relief can set in again.

Affirming the same idea, I found a wonderful quote on another blog today.......the writer is a gal named Lyn and her blog is called "Minny Blue".  Here is the quote:

               "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past".

Which brings back the memory of my Eureka moment above and that of a friend who had hers around the same time.    She was also a gal named Lynn (actually Marlyn), a childhood friend,  lost for years and then re-encountered when we were in our 30's.  The whole story about that will make a blog of its own, but that is for another time.  We were sitting in my studio and comparing notes on the parts of our lives that had transpired while we were out of touch and she looked me piercingly in the eye and said,

     " Don't laugh but my biggest insight during the time I was in Therapy was when I finally realized and accepted that I would never have a Happy Childhood."

I didn't laugh.......I just got up and hugged her. 

The photo was taken on

my 13th Birthday in the back yard

of our home in Philly.  This was my

childhood gang of BFF's but the only

relevant ones are the girl 3rd from the right, back row....that is Marlyn whom I quote above.  For the record, I am  the pudge seated in the center of the front row.

More Family Stuff

I am going to try to bring forth from my files a newly scanned document using my new Canon Printer (which seems to have been a lucky find, so far at least).  (see previous blog for my rant about printer malfunctions.)

This is a handwritten record of Sarah and Louis  Blumenthal's childrens' birthdays plus the awesome statement: "1890 May 27 - Came to America".  My Grandma Mamie wrote it and I found it in an old purse of hers when I was tidying things up after she left us at the ripe age of 95.  In examining the birthdays I came to the conclusion that my great grandparents must have only had sex in either May or August of any given year since all their children seem to have been born either in May or in February.  Of course, that is purely idle speculation.

If they all came here together, then the boys were grown men or teen-agers and the girls were still tender sprouts of 10 and 7.

On the right are the Matriarch and Patriarch, Sarah and Louis Blumenthal.  I think these must have been taken in Philadelphia after the family came to America from somewhere in Russia.  I am just guessing but I would think they are probably in their 50's or 60's here.  I love these photos.

The photo below appears to have been taken in the kitchen, probably in a house in the neighborhood called Strawberry Mansion......I think it was near the Art Museum and the River Drive..........Great Grandpa has hand resting on what looks to me like a pillow...I suspect he may have had a stroke........of course it could also be a small table top....I can't really tell for sure.  (my Mamma always talked about living on Euclid Avenue in Strawberry Mansion and I would guess that most of the family members had houses in the same neighborhood.  I think they probably all moved to West Philadelphia around the same time too..... My Mamma and Grandparents to 6106 Christian Street and Aunt Jenny and family including Sarah and Louis to 62nd and Christian Street.  At this point I think my Mom was in High School (Girls High) and I suspect that Sarah and Louis needed to be taken care of so Aunt Jenny volunteered to have them live with her and Uncle Bill.  I think Bud was probably a toddler and Lew was not yet born.  He was born about the same time that Great Grandpa died.

Great Grandma lived well into her 90's and was an invalid devotedly cared for by the blessed Aunt Jenny.
She was still alive when I was born and when I was a toddler I remember my Mamma taking me by the hand and walking me up the street to visit her in the back bedroom of Aunt Jenny's house........she was bedridden, but still knew who I was and used to shoo me to the windowsill where there was a box of sugar cubes for me to help myself to a sweet treat.  I remember thinking that she must have been a gazillion years old........tiny, frail wrinkled and wizened but with a sweet smile still.

I do not know what business my Great Grandpa was in......I think it may have been Retail in some way.  I have been told that they were quite well off until the Depression hit in 1929 and then they were much poorer.  Uncle Harry was at this point in New Bedford Mass. with a department store called Bloomingdale's.  (He changed his name to Bloomingdale when he moved to New England probably because Jews were not particularly welcome there........and, when he married he chose a lovely Goy.....a wonderful lady named Essie who was a fine addition to our family regardless of religion.)

Uncle Barney was a Cutter in the Fur and Menswear  business....I think he may have even been a pattern maker.  I have no idea what Uncle William did for a living nor Uncle Jake who had moved to New York and was rarely seen.

All of the above is for benefit of my cousins and is probably boring the hell out of anyone who is not interested in the family history.  However, to jazz things up a bit I will mention that the black sheep of the family came from Uncle Jake and His wife (also a Sarah, I believe).....besides their daughters Ruth and Sylvia they had a son named Marcus who apparently had what they called light or sticky fingers.  I used to hear whispered stories of rings and various pieces of jewelry disappearing after Marcus had visited and, apparently after he honed his skills with practice on the family he took his nimble fingers elsewhere to work on richer strangers and ended up in jail for theft...(the family, of course, would never report him to the police).....I do not know if it was of the petty variety or Grand Larceny but he provided a bit of titillation for sure.  Every family needs a jailbird, I figure and I am grateful to Marcus for the whispered stories I used to overhear while I was hiding under the kitchen table to eavesdrop when my aunts visited us.  The rest of the family were Heart-warming Chicken Soup........Marcus was the spicy Sweet and Sour Cabbage Rolls.

New Rating System for Absolutely Everything Electronic

In skipping merrily around the blogosphere I notice that many bloggers are impelled to vent their spleens via their blogs........there is quite a bit of ranting and raving going on and I think that is possibly a good thing.  The human race desperately needs an outlet for its rage that doesn't harm the environment, animals or, I guess, humans.    And on a more personal level, I, particularly, need an outlet for my rage because, not having a husband or children to take things out on, and not wanting to harm my precious kitties, I seriously require some way to keep from bursting a blood vessel in my brain and having a stroke or a seizure.

I say this because I am "mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more!"   Yeah, yeah, so what are my options???  Screaming it out the window does not seem to satisfy me any more, and, sadly, each day that passes brings more insults and blows to my delicate sensibilities......so what's a poor infuriated person to do?
I am proposing a new rating system to be appended to the price and description of just about everything even remotely electronic...........and I am calling it the FFFF rating..  That stands for the Fucking Fear and Frustration Factor. (the fear part comes from the fear that if you can't immediately get your hands around the throat of the imbecile responsible the top of your head is going to blow off)   No longer can manufacturers hide behind low prices or 4 Star ratings.  Once it is revealed how much fear and frustration their products inflict on us they may have to consider changing their miserable ways.  An item that is tagged with an FFFF rating might just as well be branded as loaded with lead, full of the Ebola virus and friendly to Hamas and the Taliban.

What brought this particular rant on is the fact that after several years of faithful and sterling service my Dell 942 All-InOne Printer lost a piece of its color cartridge bracket and, though it continued to print in black I got fed up with having to give it permission to do so every time I hit "Print".  All my fixit methods failed and I innocently decided I would spring for a new one.  Only trouble with that approach is that they don't MAKE the 942 any more and I was given a choice of bigger, bulkier more complicated units, none of which appealed to me in the least.  In desperation I picked the one that seemed the simplest (and the least expensive) and ordered it.  After receiving and installing it I quickly discovered that I had purchased a large mechanized package of horse dung.  The control panel was so complex I could barely figure out which button to push in which sequence, the screens which offered me various options were poor and the options were even worse.  And, even the simplest print request took forever for the order to be translated into Swahili or something and forwarded to the various elements which required goosing to cause the page to actually be printed. In addition. about every 3rd request to Print caused a snotty message telling me that my ink cartridges were not properly installed and I should immediately reinstall them. My heart was heavy, I can tell you, when I realized what I had lost........much like the stalwart lad your young foolish self  dumped because he was a bit unexciting and whom you longed for wistfully for the rest of your life.

However, the unkindest cut of all came when, after just a brief time of usage I noticed that my printed pages were becoming paler and paler till they finally consisted of nothing but a few blue streaks. Both ink cartridges had run out in a mere twinkling.   Grrrrr.  Sigh.  Time to get out the ink refill kits and the rubber gloves.  For years now I have been refilling my ink cartridges from a DIY kit and have been hugely successful, thereby saving at least a gazillion dollars if not more.   (One of the things which makes me totally livid with rage is the ridiculous price of those cartridges.......how dare they ?!!!)  Snapping the refilled cartridges back into their brackets I attempted to print a test page only to be advised by some supercillious piece of software that the cartridges were no longer virgins and were unacceptable to this persnickety piece of junk daring to call itself a Printer. 

I have been stewing about this situation for several days trying to decide what to do.  Because I hate this unit with a passion I decided there was no use spending the small fortune to buy new cartridges.....I would just as  soon put the money toward  a new unit.  Two days of research on my computer led to little enlightenment......I read the user reviews of all printers in my price range and found that even the ones who got mostly rave reviews also got a few pans which indicated the presence of quite a few faulty Lemon-y machines out there.  Finally in desperation I settled on a Canon AO1 from Walmart ....on Huge Special.....which hardly cost more than the price of replacement cartridges.....I may live to rue the day, but I figured it was worth a try.  Hardly anything can be worse than the Dell that I am relegating to the trash barrel..........did you all get that....
                              
                     Dell V515w ........ rating FFFF on Lois' Fucking Fear and Frustration Factor scale.

Take that you rotten manufacturers of shameful, ridiculous  garbage !!

There.....I think I feel better now.