We had already been driving for a couple of hours in a pickup truck that we had borrowed from a friend, and now it was completely dark.

“What’s wrong?” I asked sleepily. I had dozed off only a few minutes ago.

“It’s starting to rain,” Randy replied, as he reached over to turn on windshield wipers.

Rain? In a few seconds, I came fully awake. If it was raining, that meant Mom and Dad’s furniture was getting wet.

So far, it had been my worst Thanksgiving ever. Dad had passed away a month ago. My mother had died seven years earlier. When I was a kid, we always celebrated Thanksgiving at home. All four of my grandparents had died before I was born, and to me, Thanksgiving meant celebrating holiday with Mom and Dad. But now, for very first time in my whole life, all thirty-four years of it, there had been no one to spend Thanksgiving with at my parents’ place.

Randy and I did, however, have plenty of work to do at Mom and Dad's house. A family wanted to rent it, and we needed to have it cleaned out by Christmas. Randy and I had been married for a little less than six months, and this was hardly way that I had wanted us to spend our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. And yet, I knew it was no use waiting. That if we waited it wouldn’t bring either of my parents back. But cleaning out house seemed so final. The end of a lifetime. The end of two lifetimes. I simply wasn’t ready. Although, if I were going to be honest with myself, I knew I probably never would be “ready.”

We had decided to take some of Mom and Dad’s furniture home with us. My parents' house was in west central Wisconsin, and my husband I lived two-hundred-and-fifty miles away in southern part of state.

NEW YORK(Reuters) -- Need to pay down credit card debt? Desperate for money for music lessons? Simply tired of working and too embarrassed to stand on corner with a tin cup? Try "cyberbegging." For some, clicks in their cyberpails are starting to add up. Karyn Bosnak, for example, paid off $20,000 in credit card debt -- accumulated from her life in New York -- last month, after Web strangers contributed more than $13,000 to her cause, according to her Web site (http://www.savekaryn.com). Now that she has paid off her debt, Bosnak is passing buck, and directing Web surfers to other cyberbeggars such as an aspiring opera singer trying to pay for voice lessons and college loans (http://www.saveelaine.com). Along way, Bosnak has parlayed her new-found fame into talk show appearances and a reported book deal.

Hunt for cash grows ===================

Yahoo started a "begging" category with four sites in 1996. But recent spike in activity and diversity of sites, last month led Yahoo to rename category e-panhandling, said Michelle Heimburger, senior lead surfer for Yahoo. There are now 51 sites in category, ranging from some shamelessly looking for cash to others seeking financial assistance for loans or medical treatments, Heimburger said. Rich Schmidt, a freelance music marketer, who was one of first cyberbeggars, wants little more than an appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" ... and, of course, cash. "To me, Internet is creative anarchy. I just wanted to make my mark. I thought, what if 1 percent of Web surfers out there sent me a dollar," Schmidt said. "That was impetus for idea." Internet Squeegee Guy "will wash inside of your monitor screen for spare change."

Send a dollar =============