It 's Been A Dark and Stormy Night......

Hi, my darlings...........I have made yet another unsettling discovery about myself.......sob.

I am nothing but no-good Fair Weather Blogger. (As opposed, for instance, to being a Foul Weather Friend.....my pals know that I may not always be available to them when things are going well for them, but if they stumble into a pot hole or a chasm that is the time they can count on me.)

It seems that I cannot write.....period.....without my sense of humor and, horror of horrors, I seem to have misplaced or lost that most precious item somewhere in the last several months.  I have been blaming my resistance to writing on a strange melancholy or some kind of depressed state, but I realized today that the problem is neither of those things.  It is simply my skewed view of things that I have lost.

All my life I have been able to see something to giggle about in even the worst situations or at least been able to invent something.    For instance, at my cousin Lew's funeral several years ago a bizarre situation arose.  My beloved cousin, Rabbi Avi Bruce would not or could not relinquish his belief that it is the duty of the family to fill the grave.......totally.  (this may be an acceptable practice while there are a gaggle of strong armed young relations still around, but at this point we have lost all such.)  When the prime Mourners, Lew's children and their families, departed after the ceremony along with the non-relatives, that left only a few of us in our 60's thru 70's with the task.  Rabbi Avi (nephew) and niece Debra both with bad backs), her hubby, Steve (always willing even if not totally physically  able) and  cousin Lois (near 80 and losing muscle mightily with each passing second) to do the shoveling......does anyone know how many shovels of earth it takes to fill a grave hole????? ..  at least a gazillion, I can tell you.

I pooped out less than half way but those other stalwart, loyal, awesome if bedraggled members of my family finished the whole job while the grave diggers, whose job it really is, loitered around and shuffled their feet in amazement, probably laughing inside and wondering what could be possessing these insane non-union shovellers.   As I stood gasping and trying to keep from falling down in exhaustion I must admit that I had to swallow a giggle at the strange spectacle.   It was an Edward Gorey moment to perfection.  Well, folks, if it were happening today I could never have managed to find that giggle.

(To extend the family weirdness even further, I have to confess that I picked  and hid in my pocket a foot sized rock  which now resides on my kitchen windowsill with the label "Blumenthal Rock"...........I now feel that my entire family is always with me whenever I chop veggies or do the dishes.)

I must also confess that, now all of a sudden,  nothing seems funny anymore and my imagination has failed me  at digging out (you should excuse the expression)  laughable stuff). 

So there is my weakness and my dilemma exposed.  If I can't find the funny bits I can't write,  hence my absence from Blogland.  Hopefully, all is not lost.......I am feeding the plant like crazy by indulging in chocolate at  every provocation and I think I feel the stirrings of some new roots of funny-bone developing.  Let us all pray (and while you are at it, please pray that my chocolate cure does not result in another 5 lbs.......

Can You See the End of the World From Where You Are?

I have been going through a period of deep melancholy.....quite different from what I used to experience as depression so I have avoided blogging for fear it might be contagious.  

However, yesterday I received an email from a dear friend who shares many of my values, loves and hates and she was so weighed down with the state of things that I realized my own deep Ultramarine blue condition was not that bad after all......I. at least,  have recently developed a few tools to deal with "whats-the-use" and I decided to try to cheer her up with Lois's methods of coping with the End of the World.

So  I wrote her this email...........

Dearest..............

I keep thinking about your most recent letter and your worries about the fate of the world and realized one significant difference between us.  I used to wring my hands just as you are doing and then, not too long ago, I realized that the world is indeed going to hell but, even if I should live another 10 or so years, it won't be completely rotten in my lifetime !!   (probably not even in my young cousins' lifetimes that is, and beyond that is not for me to worry)  I think it might take a pretty long time for the Extremists and the Mongol Hordes to gallop in and completely destroy all signs of civilization.

 So, with that thought in mind I have really been able to shrug most of it off .......it is too bad that the world has to slip back into another set of the Dark Ages or go up in a huge bang or whatever, but as long as I don't have to experience it at its worst I don't really give a damn anymore.  I wish you could adopt my philosophy........it makes things so much easier.

I used to be something of a control freak too and would get frantic when I looked into the future (based on how things were going at the moment).  Now I feel that I have tried  to do my utmost to keep Complete Disaster from overtaking the world and have not succeeded  (up to the age of 83).......that is quite long enough I think.  And after all, it is not my personal failure .......lots of others have failed with me.  Conquering pestilence is apparently easy compared to trying to win over insanity and stupidity.

(I do not know why the rest of this page is in smaller type face nor do I care.........see, my new philosophy is actually working.)

 

  I will be damned if I will waste my remaining moments grieving over what might happen after I have shuffled off this mortal coil. (Yes, I CAN be that selfish, finally) 

By the way, dear....I can follow your dreadful scenario and see it in 3 D.......  can certainly envision an Extremist Muslim takeover of the world happening and the downfall of civilization as we know it, but, as I was falling asleep last nite I suddenly thought of something......Do you really think that China is going to allow that to happen????   (or  the Extreme Right Wing Republicans for crissake? )  Not bloody likely,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, so your scenario is not necessarily the only possible one......there may be worse.

I also had a moment of extreme clarity when I saw the SOLUTION...........and why no one has thought of this before is beyond me,     All our scientists have to do is stop whatever nonsense they are working on and concentrate  on inventing an odorless, tasteless gas that would render everyone who breathes it INFERTILE................drop a few cannisters all over  the "enemy"( whoever we determine them to be) and wait a few generations for things to improve.

Now.....won't that help you to sleep better ??

Love, Lo

Dammit...Dumped Again by a Guy.....

Waaaaaaah !  I have been keeping a stiff upper lip for several weeks now, but today was the day my wonderful caregiver, Mickey, hugged me and walked out the door for the last time.   Sob.

Actually, it wasn't me he was running away from.  He claims he is just a country boy and just couldn't stand another moment of living in the big city, especially LA.  He is escaping to a little town near Sedona, Arizona  where the air is clean and the trees and mountains are all around and where his dog can run and he may again be able to have his own horse again.  Yep, that may be the nadir of my assorted rejections......dumped for a horse.

Of course I understand his needs and a wish him nothing but good luck, but I  will miss him mightily....in fact I already do.  Aside from how much he helped me,  Mickey had become a real friend and I am feeling a huge hole in  my life.  I feel like an overinflated balloon and if you are holding any kind of  sharp implement like a pin please don't get too close.

Well, tomorrow I get a  new caregiver and, hopefully, we will develop a fine relationship.  Her name is Florence, she is a friend of my first caregiver, the wonderful Consolee,  and perhaps she will want to learn how to crochet.

Waaaaaaaaah!

Not Today, Darling......I Have a Headache

Sorry.  Just reporting the facts, ma'am.

I have been consulting with various practitioners of the Medical profession but no one yet has come up with the answer for my headache.  Trouble is, it has caused my Blogging switch to be  stuck in the "off" position again, dammit.

I am working on a repair.  Don't give up hope.

Seen Everything? Been There? Done That? Wanna Bet?

So you've got this here roly poly 83 year old female shlepping an aching, used up body out of bed on a Sunday morning, wondering if the 3 Sunday football games on TV is enough reason to go on living...........mutter, mutter,  grumble, mumble, shit, piss, fuck.   Why should  a person bother to go on?

But  what can one do  but  ignore the broken hip (mostly healed), the gimpy knee (supposedly fixed by surgery....ha.......) the non working left eye, the arthritic spine and a few other disasters and stagger into the kitchen to check out the hummingbird feeder status.   (yes, yes,  of course it's me.....who else feeds hummingbirds  before having juice or a sip of  coffee even)    Oy!

The little alcove outside my kitchen window has 5 feeders most of which are empty..........a whole passel, a veritable squadron of hummers (is a squadron bigger than a passel?) are doing their whirling dervish dance in the space  between the feeders and the noise is amazingly like a jet plane.   I already have 2  filled feeders on the sink waiting from pre-planning the night before so I fling open the atrium door and rush out,dripping sticky sugar water on naked toes, and hang them in the most preferred locations.  Gathering the empties  I reenter the atrium to find my worst nightmare is realized......there is a jet plane INSIDE the atrium, 19 or 20 feet up where the skylight is located above the spiral staircase to the guest suite.  Sadly there is a gene all hummers carry which tells them that when the sky solidifies above them they must just flap those wings harder and faster till  one of 2 things happen:
                                     1.  the sky unsolidifies
                                     2.  the hummer runs out of gas and faints

I need not tell you that I have never observed the first possible result,  while I have often witnessed the second one.  Consequently, several years ago I purchased a sturdy 6 foot long handled fishing net (suitable for scooping huge fish out of the water into the boat) and keep it handy for possible humming bird invasions. 
Only trouble being that usually they invade the sun room where the skylight is only 8 feet above the floor and quite reachable with the net......what I have here is a near impossible situation...........sigh.

So I retrieve the net from the sun room and grab a stepstool along the way and drag  my aching bones up the spiral staircase to the tippy top landing and find I cannot quite reach the top of the skylight without climbing up on the step stool.  Carefully checking to be sure I have my "Mobile Alert" pendant firmly around my neck, I climb up one step and there I totter, sweeping back and forth with the net in the skylight trying to net the bird while the creature, undoubtedly more adept than myself, manages to avoid every swipe, still flapping frantically and waiting for the  sky to unsolidify.  Finally, after about 3 or 4 minutes of this I decide that if there is one thing in the world I don't want it is another broken something from a fall off of a stepstool and the top of a spiral staircase.  My one remaining active braincell flickers and I descend to a solid stance on the top step just at the same moment that Mr. or Ms. Hummer faints.  Tenks gott.

To take you out of your misery I'll make a long silly story shorter and report that, after a frantic search, I found my victim lying on the window sill halfway up the stair, gently enclosed the precious creature in my hand, carried it outside and shoved the open beak into the feeding hole of the nearest feeder and just waited, praying that I would not have to resort to the drop of brandy I administered in an earlier rescue.  In a few seconds I felt the wings gave a few tremors and I opened my hand to see the victim dash off into the sky which, fortunately, did NOT solidify over him.

At this point I was the one who needed the brandy...... (Damn I wish I could still drink the stuff).......and as I sank limply into my recliner I realized that I had just managed to save a hummer AND live through a brand new adventure.............maybe it is too soon to cash in my chips after all.   Guess I'll stick around and see what happens to morrow.
                   

The Sky Is Falling....or Has the Roof Just Fallen In ?

Well, the dreaded thing has happened........one of my devoted followers  (Betsy) has abandoned polite patience and has burst out with direct demands that I reactivate the ol' blogging machine.  She didn't exactly say "or  else" but it was implied and I, being a devout coward about abandonment, am scrambling to find the right button to push....is there one labelled "Resume Blogging"?  ......oh damn, why are there so many buttons on this thing and none of them have identifying labels?

Oh, sorry....... THAT machine is the new mobile phone I just purchased, which has visible numbers, tenks gott, but the letters that go with them are so tiny that I need my strongest magnifier to even see that they exist,  not to mention needing  my page magnifier to read the instruction booklet which, in my opinion, is just like all the technical manuals I encountered during my computer career.  In order to understand what the manual is telling you to do you must already know how to do what you are asking it how to do.

How in the hell do those kids text so rapidly when I have been practicing for hours to memorize which letters go with which digits and have only been able to enter about 4 phone numbers and names into my Contacts List????   I,who used to pride myself on doing hexadecimal arithmetic (base 16) almost as fast as decimal (base 10), am totally defeated by a stupid gadget that 5 year olds are adept at using....while they are not even standing still, but walking around hopping up and down and/or dancing , no less............"what IS the world coming to?",.  I ask bleakly.  Obviously, I am not fit for it. Sob.

To put  into words  the most ridiculous understatement I can conjure up, this has not been my best week.  It began when I tried to access my old mobile phone account with ATT (as Shakespeare would say, "A pox on them!"  before he fainted dead away at what the world has turned into)  and was rebuffed unceremoniously with "incorrect password".  Since I was staring at my notes in my password book I see that I have entered the correct password......(yes, of course I have a password book.....doesn't everyone?    I mean....when I started out with my own computer I was warned about the advisability of using different passwords for different applications so that the  boogeymen wouldn't get me.  I know better now, but it is too late to change all of them to "abc123".....)

I next endeavored to simply retrieve my password from ATT.  That didn't work because 326 tries resulted only in several holes in the wall nearest my head.  Each time I came close to being able to read the password they were revealing to me on my phone screen the screen went black and I failed miserably at this so called simple process.  Next, several hours were spent on the phone with  both robotic and live calling partners in various departments of ATT, punching in interminable lists of numbers and choices for both robotic and supposedly live personages and getting nowhere except back to the  beginning.  At this point the walls nearest my head resembled a bombed out village in Iraq and I had to move my position many times to find a fresh wall to beat my head against.  I also was having difficulty hearing any directions that came to me from the phone due to the bells ringing inside my head.

I next tried to simply change my password.  None of the supposedly simple automated methods worked.   After waiting for 42 minutes to be allowed to speak to a live tech person in the correct department and hearing, "Hello, this is Janet" followed by the dial tone, I gave up this fruitless self torture and hied me to the nearest Walmart to try to purchase a new, uncomplicated cell phone.  That, my dears, may be the 2nd most difficult thing in the world to achieve next to World Peace.  After several hours I finally settled for one which has a camera but no keyboard and staggered home a bloody and totally beaten human specimen.  Which brings you up to date on where I was when I began this post and pretty much where I have  been while NOT blogging lately..

 During the 24 hours since the above carnage the bells in my brain have quieted and I have been slowly attempting to subjugate myself to this new infernal machine, but I must confess, progress is slow and I am not sure if I will ever  be completely whole again.  However, I am thrilled to report that at least I can remember my new cell phone number.........or is that the one I had before the last one....?  Sob.........

Confession Time

You really should thank Qandlequeen  at "A walk Through My Little World"  for rousing me from my zombie like state to post a few words today.  I hope she will not hate me for stealing her stuff.

http://dementiawoman.blogspot.com/2010/09/question-of-day-sept-39-2010.html

She asked, "What was the latest thing you fished out of your trash ?"
Below was my comment and I find the idea so intriguing that I will continue her challenge.  And do go visit her blog....she is great.

Confess if you dare.

 Comment left by yours truly:


OK......I'll tell you, but you must promise not to tell anyone.

After I brushed my teeth this AM I tossed the mostly used tube of toothpaste into the trash basket and then I was wrestled to the ground by my Depression Era mentality. It still had about a half dozen squeezes left in it and I hate waste, so........sigh.