Many things happen within a year's time of life and
as you and your friends get older you lose many of them to death. I had
been through a rash of deaths in the 80s with friends dying of AIDS
along with Flo the person who first showed me unconditional love . After her death I decided I would not go to any more funerals and
I haven't and won't. I have lost many friends in my lifetime and none
more so than in the past 30 years. It never gets easier but I see them
as guardian angels looking over my shoulder and more than one slaps me
on the head when I am about to do something stupid---I keep them busy.

Along
with the deaths there were many good things happening as always does in
life. I was having a ball with the birds but I have to side track here.
I mentioned that whenever I let the birds out of the cage I made sure
the doors and windows were locked and that, generally, they would all
return to their individual cages for their 10 PM snacks. One night,
September 16, 2005, as usual, we went through the routine but Loner, a cockatiel,
was not to be found!! I looked in every draw, behind every stick of
furniture, pulled out the fridge and the stove, looked in cabinets--you
name it and I moved it. I went outside looking all around with zero
results. I was heart broken and puzzled. A couple of years later (!!!)
when the maintenance men came into fix/replace my kitchen drawers they
found Loner under the bottom of the lowest drawer!!!! I am still
flabbergasted today--I don't know how he got there, why I didn't hear
him making noise and why there wasnever an 'aroma' all these years.

More
and more there were more entries in my diary starting with "Allen and
I...." either to a movie, a restaurant or the theatre. We had burgers at
Bennigan's (closed) salad
with blue cheese and garlic chicken at the Beverly Hills Cafe (closed)
lunch at the Lone Star (closed), dinner at the Peter Pan Diner (open), Jaxson's for ice cream (open), Sweet Tomato's (open), Houston's (closed), Wan's Mandarin House (open) next door to Winn-Dixie just to name a few and
let's not forget us going to the movies on Fridays and seeing "Capote"
(slow moving), "Derailed" (better than I expected), "Rent" (didn't like
the show, didn't like the movie), 'Pride and Prejudice" (good), "The
Squid and the Whale" (good acting but disappointing film), "Brokeback Mountain" (disappointing, way too long), "The Producers" movie
(enjoyable)  and the last movie I saw in 2005 was "The Family
Stone"--what do you mean you don't remember it??? I wrote it that 'I enjoyed it--funny,
tearjerker--with Clair Danes' and, no, I don't remember it either. And
we, including Gino and Anita, were going to plays and occasionally bird
shows with Jill.

There
was a subtle change near the end of 2005 in the sense that Anita was
taking me less on my shopping rounds and Allen was taking me more.
I
had started blogging and by 2006 I was writing on 7-8 different blog
sites and "Letting It All Hang Out" after being edited, proofread, and
everything set in place was the end of 2005!