Secuestro

Can't believe the whole month of March flew past and we're into April, the IRS dread hanging over my head, and I haven't blogged once.
But I do have some good news to share with my senior citizens friends who probably know nothing about blogging. A dormant brain can be awakened! Now, that not may sound impressive to the younger crowd whose brain is still firing on all cylinders, but to the age advanced, that's good news. Example:
I've been tediously translating Cuba on My Mind (Secuestro will be next, hopefully, if I live that long).  First, I roughly translate a page from English to Spanish and type it into the computer. Then I check out the translation word for word using a program called Google Translate and the Chicago English-Spanish dictionary, best of its kind. Frequently what sounds okay in English makes absolutely no sense in Spanish. There's my friend Pattie who told a Panamanian she was 'muy embarazado' thinking she was saying she was very embarrased, when she was actually saying she was very pregnant. Little errors like that can make a big difference in a translated manuscript. Then there is the gender business and the accents to deal with. Everything in Spanish is either male or female and there is no in-between. Perro is a dog and perra is a bitch, and believe me this translation has been one big perra.
It takes a good 20-30 minutes per page.
After a week or ten days of this struggle (I hadn't written in Spanish since I was 15 years old) something in the back of my brain unlocked--literally. All the rules I'd learned came back: i before o takes an accent; but o at the end of the word gets the accent; stress on the third syllable gets an accent; months are not capitized; an inverted question or exclamation mark goes at the beginning and also a righted one at the end of a sentence, and on and on and on. I had a sense of opening Pandora's box.
I was discussing this with #2 son David in Chicago and by coincidence he'd just read an article on brain functions that delved into brain usage and how the brain stores away information for a long, long time, but if it is never retrieved, it disappears. Research was being done on the connection between this diminished usage and Altzheimers. It appears that the more you use your brain, the less likely a person is to lapse into forgetfulness.  
I am now looking for a piano. I used to play years and years ago. I've stored that knowledge in a closed file and the notes are gone. That section of my brain needs to be activated again.
Now my only big problem is: When would I ever find time to play the piano?