Elise Sereni Patkotak

As I grow older I notice that many people are adjusting their expectations of my abilities to remember dates, names, chores, appointments, etc. Some might find this annoying. I find it refreshing. There are finally expectations for me that I can achieve.

I often think that if Jesus came back to earth and walked into some of these Christian churches on a Sunday they would throw him out for being a socialist bum who was preaching enabling the poor.

My brother has been questioning one of the items on my bucket list – sky diving. I guess the only explanation is that there aren’t too many things left on my bucket list that I can still do. Little Joe is dead so he’s probably not going to fall in love with me and marry me. I am never going to write the great American novel as I now realize I am much too lazy to put that much effort into doing it. And I am definitely not going to be Miss America, even in that title’s diminished status. So,

I think I was about 20 years old before it occurred to me that my parents must have been having sex while I was in the house if my sister was born when I was almost 10. The thought still causes me to shudder.

What a summer I’m having. Last night I went to our zoo’s fundraising event and met Jack Hanna. Next month I get to once again enjoy Mr. Whitekeys’ Whale Fat Follies. And then in August I go to Fairbanks to be in the audience for Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me!”

I guess it’s true that everyone and everything eventually comes to Alaska. Now if we could just get Palin to move in the other direction…..

I live in a very nice section of south Anchorage where the nearest thing I see to someone or something homeless is when a baby bird falls out of its nest too early. I am not so protected though that I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be to my nice little middle class life to have a homeless camp nearby.

I enjoy the fact that I can go outside and not worry about who or what I might run into. I like that I can walk my dogs without fear of encountering someone drunk or crazed. I have no

I spent part of last Saturday watching two ravens flying in crazy circles, dipping and diving, looping and swooping. And it was all I could do to keep from trying to flap my arms and join them. Sadly, despite the amount of lift I can now get from the loose skin that flaps on my upper arms, I still couldn’t quite take flight.

So I have now renewed my determination to sky jump at least once in my lifetime so I can feel what flying must be like.

So having waited over three years for the Palin e-mails, I can only say they seem to be as much of a let down as the second Matrix movie was. Maybe too much anticipation is not a good thing. But after hearing what is in what was released… and no, I didn’t read them… I have a life… anyway, after seeing what was released I can only assume all the good stuff was redacted. What an anticlimax to the whole stupid Palin brouhaha.

… that there are three wars going on, the economy is still in the toilet and our national debt will have our kids working for the Chinese in less than a generation. So can we please get past Mr. Wiener’s penis pictures. Male members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have proven time and time again that they are pigs, cheaters and scummy sex bags. This is neither new nor shocking news. We need to get over our prurient interest in the size and shape of their genitals if we are going to keep electing them to lead

Raise your hand if you are going to pour yourself another cup of coffee, put the paper down and pick up instead that $1000 box of printed e-mails that the state of Alaska apparently does not have the technical expertise to run online. OK, everyone with their hand up, I want you to ask yourself this. Isn’t life a tad too short to waste any of it reading those e-mails? Are you really that pathetic and starving for any form of human communication? For god’s sake, go to an Internet porn site if you need to connect with something. It