Last week, while driving to a medical appointment, I tuned in the local NPR radio station landing right in the middle of what – FOUR times a year! - always feels like non-stop hounding me for money. (Didn't they do this last week?)

As always, my thought about the mind-numbing repetition of it remained the same: “Okay, okay. I paid. So please stop now.”

But one thing was different this time - it was not lost on me that I am about to subject you, dear readers, to the internet version. Does that make me a hypocrite? I don't know.

So here we are again for the fifth year of the annual TGB Donation Drive. It helps cover a bunch of expenses like an advertising-free email subscription service, email and domain-name registrations, useful publications about growing old and even the internet service which increases by 10 percent every year.

In this way, Time Goes By remains an ad-free zone on the internet.

As I mentioned not long ago, we are in to year 17 of this blog. Even I'm surprised when that comes to mind. How am I not bored yet? Perhaps because growing old keeps changing for me or, maybe, it's that it reveals itself more fully as the years pass.

On a practical level, TGB gives shape to my days. I would be much lazier than I am if I didn't need to have a post prepared for most days of the week and being active mentally seems also to keep me moving for the physical tasks of life I might otherwise ignore too often.

Whatever it is, I love doing this blog, and I am grateful to all of you, dear readers, for your fine contributions in the comments and your stories on Tuesdays. It's your smart, thoughtful, and funny conversation that makes TGB special.

So here is the information you need if you want to donate.

HOW TO DONATE
The campaign consists of this introductory blog post with a link to the Paypal donation page and a MUCH shorter version of this invitation to contribute at the top of each post through next Sunday. The “rules” are these:

• No one is required to donate. Nothing about TGB will change if you do not. This is entirely voluntary.


• If you do choose to donate, no amount is too small. Whatever is comfortable for you is all that matters.


• You do not need a Paypal account to donate. When you click on the link below, the Paypal donation page will open (it's a little slow sometimes) where you can donate via credit card, debit card or, if you have a Paypal account, by a money transfer - each in any amount you want.


• The Paypal site works in the United States and internationally.

To repeat: Donations are voluntary. Nothing changes if you do not donate. Here is the Paypal link which you will also find near the top of the right sidebar.

For those of you who have set up a recurring donation, you might want to cancel that and if you are still inclined to donate, do it as a one-time. It will save you some scrambling, perhaps, in setting your account straight when I have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Not that I think I'm out of here anytime soon. For an old woman with cancer and taking the limitations of having COPD too into consideration, I'm feeling remarkably well these days. But who knows.

Remember how I used to say I wanted to live to see the Mueller Report? Now I want to see the November election results.

Here's a treat for anyone who reads this far – the excellent feel-good song from Disney's The Jungle Book, released in 1967, The Bare Necessities. Of course, people our age know that it is the marvelous and charming Phil Harris doing the singing.