I am all pumped up today.

WordPress informed me in the early hours of the morning – because that’s when I wake up, and of course the first thing I do after swallowing the mandatory morning medicine is check my phone – that it was this day sixteen years ago I signed up for a blog.

Howling Hurricanes! (Thank you, Captain Haddock)

Has it really been that long? Is my baby a sweet sixteen-going-on-seventeen young lass now?! When and how did that happen? It feels like it was only yesterday that she was a toddler holding on to me and testing her unstable footsteps, and just like that she is in the middle of her teens? Soon she will flex tiny wings and want to fly away, make her own home somewhere far breaking her mother’s heart…

Okay. Enough of the melodrama. Just not my style.

Frankly, I had not shed tears when the sons flew away leaving the nest empty, only cheerfully wished them good luck and sent them on their way to their happiness, wherever it lay. Of course I keep the home warm and welcoming for whenever they want to fly home and spend time with us old fossils. But it was understood that their home was elsewhere, wherever they made one for themselves.

Jumping Catfish! (Yeah, it looks like a Captain Haddock kinda day, doesn’t it!)

I have done it again, haven’t I? Digressed. Big time. This post is not about the first child, or the second, nor the fourth, but the third one, the blog which goes by the moniker Shail’s Nest, all of sixteen years and a some dozen hours old today. (By the way, for those interested, Luci is the fourth)

It seems unbelievable to me that I have been at it for this long. I am surprised that my fingers did not fall off with all the tap-dancing I made them do! Hmm. Someone, I think it was Ken, actually wished me sixteen more years of blogging. Hush Ken. Let them fingers not hear you, or they may well go on strike, slave driver that I can be, making them work whenever it pleases me.

Anyway, here we are, my tap-dancing fingers and I. We have not been around all that much these last few months. That’s all going to change now. I sincerely hope my fingers have not lost their touch and will start dancing at my command, if not better then at least as good as before. Here’s hoping! 🙂

FOWC: Pump

Shail Mohan 2023