Anyway, I'm five years shy of being an octogenerian, WITH (thanks to a fairly generous insurance settlement) a sufficiency of cash on hand, probably enough to last me till I die...

Which is not how most people end their lives in America--and certainly not how I had Imagined I would go out.  The last few weeks, I have been making myself little gifts that have enormously improved the quality of my life:  The first being the radical and thorough fumigation of my apartmentino--No more cockroaches!.  The second (if not the third) being the purchase of a no-fail/no-fuss tea-making/coffeewater-heating apparatus, plus several hundred dollars worth of tea and coffee (tonight's special first-time treat being Nilgiri, which is scrumptious, and everything I ever dreamed might come to me from the Western Ghats).  The third (if not the second) being an array of Armani Acqua di Gio toiletries, far beyond my means as a poor person (in the $200 range), but which , like lavender (without lavender's suggestion of the Rococo and the Antique), make me smell delicious but not effeminate, and tout de la mode moderne, without any affectation of juvenility--"Cucumbers?" said Kirsten, That's nice."

And already I have forgot the first things I purchased (so much a usual part of my life they've become):  $700 worth of printed music from Amazon (everything from Frescobaldi and Byrd to Debussy and Joplin), and an interesting and adaptive Casio electric piano to play it all on.  I played Les Barricades Mystérieuses and Les Ondes yesterday for my Filipina maid (whose name, though she speaks no Spanish, is Estrella), thinking she'd like them, if anything, and-but I have to report that the music of Couperin is as total a miss with criadas filipinas, as the music of Beethoven is said to be with cows (who don't care for Sturm und Drang).  When I asked her if she'd liked Les Ondes at least, she had to pause to think what if anything I could be referring to--since what I'd played had made so little impression of any sort whatever on her.  Nonetheless, I gave her $140 for Christmas, which caused her, in the fullness of her gratitude, to hug me several times.