Turns out what they say is FREE costs a buck. If you're like me, you say, "No matter." Pretty soon, though, I notice that they advertise it as "free or nearly free," and again, it doesn't sound like a big deal. But I'm wondering if it will become "$2.00 or nearly $2.00" and I'll still be saying "Oh, well." 
Oh, well.

When my oldest son first gifted me with my eyepad, unannounced, I saw there was no smiley face for my e-mail. I've grown accustomed to the smiley face; I feel like it makes me less of a bitch :-) so I created a signature for all my outgoing e-mails on the eyepad: "Where's the smiley face on this dum iPad?"

That went out for about a month, and finally my gift-bearing son clued me in to some "free" apps for smiley faces.

After a few confusing forays, I went to a geek at my public library and sought help with the smiley face issue. Of course, afterwards, when I thought I had gotten it,  I didn't have it, so I went back the next day and we tried again. Trying to stick to the "free" notion, we found we were stymied again and again. Finally it came to me that I was going to have to spend a buck, and "who cares!" let's just "get'er done!"

I really only wanted certain smiley faces - I thought I could be quite happy with 8 or 10 - but this process landed me up with three hundred and forty-seven smiley-faces for my e-mail! And  some of them clearly Japanese characters! or is it Chinese? I may never know...I'm beginning to think of them as totems or whatever. We surely are going global.

The first "totem" smiley face is truly the classic smiley face, which I can't seem to find on this blog - another huge project?! - and so, at least, I have that, for a buck, on my iPad2. I can only tell you that even if it took  two days to get it, I just can't seem to live without "cutesie" :-) . I'm a serious painter and collage artist, but with letters and e-mails the cutesie smiley faces make things very clear, and I love clarity. Does that sound weak? Clarity is so hard to get these days, when "stinkin' thinkin'" is what we have so often, all around us. Things  aren't that clear at all. So we have to MAKE them clear.