Have one wonderful son. I am honored to be his mother

Have 3 beautiful, crazy Basenji hounds with an attitude who give me joy and lots of laughs.

Have large perennial garden where I have planted over 350 new bulbs for next spring.

Have led a wonderful, varied, richly texured life full of love and beauty with the full measure of joy and tragedy. Have spent most of my life traveling and having a good time; thank heavens I didn't wait, even though the literary and philosophical contributions I had envisioned for my later years seem unlikely to materialize. The only copy of my early writings was destroyed by fire (maybe for the best).

Am a serious Janite and token Ricardian.

Love art, museums, movies, theatre, ballet, dance, opera, sailing, Burma, Iles sous le Vent, Paris, Monte Carle and reading--especially history, philosophy, mysteries, artists' and literary figures' bios, French literature and Austen, the Brontes and Edith W.

As PWC, mostly watch videos, listen to audio tapes, crawl or teeter around the garden cutting flowers or planting them, lie in the hammock, sit by the fire, rarely try to write, help other PWCs laugh, dream (without feeling badly), of activism, travelling, having a horse again and of going to the library without getting sensory overload. Recently I told my dear doctor that I would be overjoyed to be consistently functionally literate and to be able to figure out how to use the toaster.

Lost my consulting business to the DD. I have never identified my essence with my function or predicated my self worth on achievement (obvious from my lack thereof). Have always been too caught up in the wild sweetness of life to set many goals or take them seriously. Ironically, I am self-disciplined, self-motivated, compassionate and in the course of enjoying myself have always tried to make life better for anyone I meet. I don't think I have any regrets (I may have forgotten them), and even with the DD in residence since April 95, managed to work with superhuman effort until I was disabled in November 95.

Am steadily deteriorating neuro-, vision- and pain-wise but after my first initial terror at losing my intellectual abilities and vision, manage to extract joy from my limited life, help my few remaining friends (the ones who didn't give up because I haven't gotten better or died) by listening. I still laugh at the DD and myself when I malfunction. On rare occasions, I can still say the right thing to help people and make them laugh as well as change their worlds from black and white to color even as mine is turning grey.

I am grateful to be alive, even in this condition, and if I ever do myself in because I have become a burden rather than a minor contributor to life, I hope to not go quietly and to use my death to help the cause of PWCs.

I have always and loved and laughed easily and still do.