I interrupt this blog...

to catch my breath. I'm a bit winded, having spent the better part of 2 weeks sprinting like a broken field runner. Why? I've been trying to avoid the chunks of the financial sky that's falling. Evidently, Chicken Little is correct once again. It's not exactly the sky that's falling but the stock market. And the beat goes on. The collapsing economic dominoes (I don't understood that game. Do you?) add to an escalating pundit hysteria. Oh my, Oh my, it's the Second Coming of The Great Depression! If they don't shut up, they will induce enough fear to bring it on. Can one of you psychics please channel FDR?

I pass a week ago last Monday in blissful ignorance, going about my errands, unaware I am suppose to be clutching my chest in dread. A former journalist and news junkie, I have stopped watching news broadcasts except an occasional Jim Lehr and yes, the Daily Show. I no longer subscribe to newspapers or news magazines.

Of course, bad news will out.

OK, so I trip over it, maybe on TV or the car radio. I ask myself: Is there anything I can do about this? If the answer is in the negative, I do my best to release it and move on. (It's one of those times when having absolutely no investment portfolio is a silent blessing) I don't watch the shows, read the paper or engage in conversation on the subject. I will wallow no more.

Take the weather channel--please (couldn't resist, sorry), which runs neck in neck with the news channels as purveyors of the Most Awful, speakers in superlatives of doom. When I first moved down 7 years ago to Florida, (also known as the"what's the weather state") I fell into that addiction, and ended up paralyzed with fear.

I have since resigned as a "weather warrior". I now limit watching to the local forecast and an brief look at weather patterns. I don't allow myself to get sucked into the whirlwind of doom--be it flood, hurricane, tornado et al. Not to mention monitoring those darn millibars.

A final note. Please don't bother to phone this "Pollyanna" to bring her "back to reality." Those who have tried are chuckling. You see, my answering machine instructs callers to leave only "good news."

What can I say? This girl just wants'ta feel good. Over and out.