Bright, bright, sunshiny Friday

It was two degrees, or so, overnight, and I didn't sleep well.

The cold hurts all my muscles and makes my bones groan.

I try not to go to work on Friday, and, year end close notwithstanding, I didn't go today.

First I went to the gym, and Kris marshaled me through her routine.

No doubt I'd been off for two weeks.

Then I went to the optometrist to pick up my new glasses.

That is the technician, making all right.

This is me, attempting my first selfie.

Good for all of you who get it done.

Far harder than it seems.

A deer foraging under the golf course trees. 

It was in a group of five or six, which probably is decent protection against a coyote attack. 

Lunch time. Home again, home again.

The wreath continues to look lovely.

Snow on pig. Snow on toad. Snow on lambie.

Snow on the bird feeder.

Snow on a full can of bird seeds. Sparrows are little piglets, too.

The pear tree has hundreds of buds set.

All is well with the world.

I didn’t come in from the cold yesterday, or, my heat pump learning curve

Most all my life I’ve lived in homes heated with natural gas. Nice stuff, comes into the house through a pipe, burns in the furnace, makes warm air. Have the furnace checked yearly, good to go.

When I looked at mobile home units, my choices were electric or propane. I’ve been in propane heated houses, and it’s OK, but not so warm as natural gas. Don’t laugh; there’s a difference between warm heat and not so warm heat.

The units available last June were this electric unit, and a propane unit. I chose this one because electricity comes in through the electric line, no tromping out to check the meter on the propane tank.

I looked it all over. I saw an air conditioner outside, an electric furnace in the laundry room, an electric hot water tank in the walk in closet. I asked the manager, what I could expect for an electric bill.

“About a hundred dollars a month, if you’re careful.” That is astoundingly low.

We moved here in July. It was hot, and the air ran all the time. The bill was about sixty dollars. The next month was hotter, the bill was eighty eight dollars. September, cooler, back to sixty. October, we didn’t heat much, forty dollars. November, the furnace ran a lot, back to eighty dollars.

So, December was moving along as usual, until that polar vortex slipped on down. It is cold. There was that little thermostat mishap, adding to my misunderstanding of the heating system. The last week before the vortex, the temperature hovered in the twenties, day and night, and the furnace ran a lot.

But, the air was cool. I had Dan, the maintenance guy, take a look. And, I learned about heat pumps. Yes, that air conditioner is a heat pump, and they are super efficient, in their own way, and not the gas way I was used to.

When the thermostat is asking for heat, the heat pump extracts it from the outside air and sends it in. Dan aimed his heat gun into several registers, and the air coming out at the floor is in the seventies. It feels cooler because it’s cooler than body temperature.

My lifelong habit is to turn down the heat at night and increase it in the morning. I made a four degree change here, between day and night. That will all change tonight.

Yesterday Dan proved to me that increasing the thermostat two degrees will cause the electric furnace to turn on when it is cold enough outside to discourage the heat pump. “Just like burning money,” he announced. It was around ten degrees outside at the time. “Don’t change it,” he advised. “Run a constant temperature when it’s so cold out.”

But, of course, I would learn the hardest way possible. I lowered the thermostat to sixty two overnight. I heard the heat pump running whenever I woke up. This morning, I raised the thermostat one degree, ate breakfast, went to work. Three hours later the temperature was unchanged.

Outside we were up from two degrees to seven. Just as I was leaving an hour later, the temperature rose to sixty three. Triumphantly, I raised it another degree and went to my appointment. On returning the house was---sixty three. It was ten degrees outside. In six hours the heat pump increased the house temperature one degree.

I got it, Dan. I punched in sixty six and listened to dollar bills burn for half an hour, though I felt warm air rising all around. It’s sixty six now, and the heat pump is maintaining. Interesting stuff, this new heat.

Now, this is scary

Dan and Joe came to fix the plumbing leak this morning. It was right there under the sink. Dan even raised the foot on one side of the dishwasher to make it level and stop the door from binding.

As I always do, I took a picture of them on their hands and knees, working. You know, illustrated stories. Didn't think any more of it until an hour or so later. I was visiting with a friend, and my phone made a new ping.

I took a look, and wound up appalled. My phone was offering to let me share a photo with an apparent Google circle entity at the location the photo was taken. That circle member was identified as the management company of my mobile home complex. 

Still baffled, as I could not make out the picture from the thumbnail, I tapped for the full offer, and there was a picture of Dan and Joe, fixing the leak. I would never have used the picture; it was rude. But, Google looked at a picture on my phone, associated it with the location and wanted to post it to their employer's Google circle.

And, that is frightening.

At my Thanksgiving gathering, one guest and I were chatting about the intrusion of intelligence into our lives. She told me that "they" listen to phone conversations, and then flood your internet with ads relating to subjects or products you might have discussed. I was skeptical.

After today, I think I will enlist a friend to help me conduct a test and find out if we're watching Home Depot and Victoria's Secret spots streamed down both sides of our computer screens after we chat them up.

I have one more subject for today. I cannot think of a category for this one. When Dan and Joe came in this morning, about nine, Dan complained it was cold. But, he complains about everything. I knew I'd just turned the heat up from my overnight 62 degrees, and blew him off.

When I came in from work at two this afternoon, Dan was right. It was cold in here. Sixty two and sinking. Management sent the dynamic duo right back. Joe ran back and forth for tools; Dan lay on his stomach in my small laundry room, testing out theories with volt meters.

Here is the conclusion. The red wire from the thermostat to "the board" in the furnace is shorted. "Some fool" probably stapled it down ( they could not pull it more than a foot out of the wall at the thermostat) instead of letting it lay loose "up there," and a probable nick has shorted through.  It cannot be fixed until tomorrow, when "Chip" can come a pull a new wire. Shame that fool stapled it down, else a new one could be pulled along the same route.

Dan and Joe went to the office and returned with two space heaters for us. They put one in the kitchen and one in the living room. After supper we turned them on, to warm up the house before bedtime. We promptly popped a breaker. We unplugged the kitchen heater; Nancy Drew located the breaker in a flash and put it back in order.

Looks like we'll be sharing the cat tonight.

Nancy Drew knows

There are two bathrooms in our new digs. Mine sprung a leak, and it’s not my problem.

In the old house, eventually I might come across a piece of plywood nailed down, and on investigating find it was to repair a leak that no one knew how to resolve in another way. It became my problem to ascertain the cumulative damage and find the repair people needed.

But, now it’s not my problem.

A while back I found water on the floor. I cleaned it up, and kept an eye on it. It didn’t happen when I used the shower. It didn’t happen when I flushed the toilet. I decided a washcloth I’d hung over the tub to dry had dripped, mopped up the puddle and forgot it.

Sunday we had company. Sunday evening I found a puddle. I cleaned it up and wondered if it came from the shower I took that morning. In the middle of the night the puddle was back, and by yesterday morning soaked the towel I threw over it.

I called management, and Dan and his helper Joe were dispatched.

Dan surveyed the puddle. He flushed the toilet. The puddle did not increase. He filled the tub with water and drained it. The puddle did not increase. He and Joe went outside and “pulled a panel.” No wet insulation. He came back in, mopped up the puddle and told me to be more careful.

The floor was dry all day.

I was home yesterday. My six year old battery went toes up; I had to wait for a jump. That failed. They sent a Jerr-Dan. Right in front of my house, the Jerr-Dan went toes up. Not my problem. Dan and Joe trailing about looking for a water leak helped ameliorate my car frustration. AAA sent a new Jerr-Dan and Dan and Joe left.

I did spend an hour at Goodyear, having my battery replaced. Got home five minutes before the kid, and counting the day a total waste, just hung out for the rest of the night. Bathroom floor was dry, until after a lovely supper of rigatoni in homemade chicken Alfredo. Nicely plated. And, we ran the dishwasher.

Nancy Drew looked at the puddle and puzzled, and realized the common denominator was the dishwasher on the other side of the bathroom wall. It ran on Sunday, after company, and ran last night, after supper.

I went to work today, after the long weekend plus Monday. I stopped at the office on my return and made an appointment to have Dan come tomorrow morning to look at all the towels in the bathtub. I’ll start the dishwasher when he calls to say he’s on the way.

Musing on prevailing

When I was very little I took it for granted nothing would change, the doctor would always be the doctor, the dentist always the dentist. Becoming an adult meant establishing those relationships all over.  My very first “adult” doctor was my husband’s family doctor, Dr. Borland.  One of his very first cases was the amputation of my husband’s great grandfather’s leg, and he was pleased as punch to end his career delivering his fifth generation of Noragon’s.

After he retired it was catch as catch can. I’ve always found a shake down period required with a long term doctor. Don’t brush me off, take time to answer my questions, believe me when I tell you a member of staff is rude, and so on. I didn’t get on with Dr. Killian, who replaced Dr. Borland, but he was a good doctor for the children. My oldest daughter still sees the doctor who bought Dr. Killian’s practice.

I concluded a doctor or dentist is, after all, a business proposition.  My criteria were ability to come to a mutual understanding and being my age or younger. I was tired of them retiring on me. This actually has worked out quite well, except I look at my primary care physician, with whom I have gone to battle on more than one issue, and think, “My God, she’s reached retirement age. I don’t want to do this all over again!”

This whole train of thought commenced this morning, in the dentist’s office for my twice annual cleaning of the teeth. When the dentist dropped by to check the hygienist’s work she told me the filling between my two front teeth needed replaced.

My mind flashed back to that filling, the last one my parents paid for. I was twenty one, at Dr. Benson’s office in the Rockefeller Building in downtown Cleveland. The pain of the Novocain injection was so incredible that when the filling fell out a few years later I would not let my dentist replace it. I was in my thirties, and the dentist assured me that no Novocain would be involved, the teeth had not deteriorated, the filling merely needed replaced. It was done.

I told Dr. Kate (see how young they are now!) the history of that filling being placed when I was twenty one, losing it, going without, and ten years later finally having it replaced. “I wasn’t even born then,” she remarked, before snapping back to attention and telling me no Novocain would be required this time, either.

Contrasting Dr. Kate with my primary care physician’s age was disheartening this morning. Dr. J definitely  was middle aged when I started seeing her twenty years ago. I feel that certified letter coming on, telling me she has retired. I wonder if the next PCP will look over her shoulder when I call her Dr. Real Last Name.

A tough lesson

I used to run three internet browsers; IE, the big blue E; chrome; Foxfire. I was urged to switch to Foxfire years ago, to avoid IE security problems.  I never liked Foxfire, starting with their logo. I kept it updated, but only used it to play an online solitaire game.  The author of the game program and I emailed on occasion; I would find problems with the program, tell him, and he would fix them.

I used Chrome for blogging when Google stopped supporting IE. I still use IE for almost everything. I like its bookmarking system, which I can alphabetize in a heartbeat. I never figured out Foxfire bookmarks, and still don’t know how to use Chrome bookmarks efficiently.

Last Sunday evening I was tempted by new bar that appeared on my solitaire screen some time ago, inviting me to download Mahjong, among other solitaire games. Why not, I decided. I know the source; I love Mahjong. Click.

Within seconds my computer was hijacked by an operating system whose name included “trovi.” First it owned Foxfire. It began installing programs. I tried uninstalling and was met with a message that essentially said by uninstalling this program you are agreeing to install a whole slew of other programs. I went to IE to search how to destroy “trovi.” I had to get it out of my browser directories. I could not. It was ahead of me, opening new tabs of itself.

I texted my computer geek, who essentially has not responded. On Monday I called a local service and made an appointment for a service call on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday morning I turned the box around and decided I could disassemble the puppy myself. I took a picture. How stupid, I decided; I didn't have a computer to put the picture on to study to put all the cords back. But I certainly was thinking through my problem!

From top to bottom I pulled cords and taped them to the edge of a shelf, with a description of where in a bank of slots they went. I could have ruined the phone line connection with all my tugging, except my fingers slipped and dislocated a silly cap covering the regular push button phone connector. Fools. I cannot imagine why it has a cover; no other phone connection in this house has one.

Tom carried the box to my car; I found a geek to carry it into the store. I paid an eighty five dollar deposit and another forty dollars for rush service to jump the eight systems on the bench waiting service. They would call me the next afternoon, which they did.

I learned the aforementioned system installed over two hundred programs on my computer on Sunday evening. Given its druthers, it probably would have pushed on to the blue screen of death.  It was Wednesday afternoon, my computer would be ready Thursday morning.

We looked at the screen in the shop; a couple of icons from the bogus installs remained, and Garrett, the technician removed them. Brought the puppy home, plugged in all the cords from bottom to top and fired ‘er up. Opened Chrome, to make blogger my home page. All the tabs went to “trovi.” Tried IE. It defaulted to Bing, not Google. Sorry Bing, I do not like the program. “Trovi” was in charge of IE, too. I didn’t even go to Foxfire. I called Garrett.

He set up a remote scan and we started over again. “It’s in a registry,” I kept saying. I don’t have a clue what a computer registry is; I only know the internet information I got before I was so hijacked was to remove it from my browser registries. “I know,” Garret said. I wonder if his teeth were clenched. 

I also told him to get Foxfire off my computer; I never wanted to see that little fox again.

In the end Garret ran a half hour scan that found the last two hijackers. One was in a piece of Foxfire code and one was embedded in Microsoft.

Collateral damage is my email account. I am up and running everywhere except Microsoft Outlook, whose registry is damaged. Trying to get to the email through my ISP bombed; my password is no good. I have to call them to answer secret questions. That’s my next project.

And that’s where I've been the last four days. I have lovely pictures of Laura’s jazz ensemble concert Monday night, but first I must get the email up and running.

The pressure is off

Taking Emily and Joe to inspection last night, there were groups of people at every drive and intersection along the long, long route to school. They jumped and cheered and waved homemade signs at passing autos, exhorting the team to victory and its fans to cheer loudly. The enthusiasm made me smile and wave back. There was no such joy from the rest of the car.

We passed police cars staged along the route. I remembered the newspaper said the team would be given a police escort the several miles from the school to the freeway. The band and team busses would not leave for another ninety minutes, but quite a crowd was assembling. I thought how nice the whole send off would be.

The game was televised on a very local television station and at half time Jan and I tuned in to watch the band perform. They are very good. The home team led by ten or fifteen points.

Toward the end of the third quarter I wandered by again and Jan spun the dial. The boys in blue and white were up by far more than twenty points. I called my son-in-law and simply said there was little chance of a loss, so we needed to discuss options. He asked for the inspection time Saturday and calculated what time they would leave Cincinnati to arrive on time.

The stony face that came through the door at midnight confirmed the probable victory. Miss Emily avoided me so completely I finally asked her to stand still while I delivered my news. She went to bed without a word, and I stifled a grin.

I had an email this morning from the chief band parents, explaining the great victory and providing a link to a written form to request absence from next Saturday’s game. It can be turned in only on Monday; any later and the absence would be unexcused. That did make me smile. I wonder how many will not perform.

These footballers are two victories from a divisional state championship. There’s a lot of skin in this, including the grandma who drove two band members to practice or games three times a week. Let’s all cheer the team, and the band that plays at half time in their support. They've gone a long way.

Will they never lose?

The football team played every game this season, as is expected, and the band played every half time, in support of the team. And the parents and grandparent of the very few band members and football players without personal transport have made every pickup and delivery of those select few. The drill has been in effect since the last week of July, in fact, when the well organized parents of both kinds of player began their annual ritual of living vicariously.

Now it is the end of the third week of November and no, it has not ended. For the first time in longer than I can be bothered to look up, the football team is undefeated. An interview with the coach made the top half of the first page of the local paper. He’s proud of his “guys,” citing names and statistics so far back that only football parents emerged with eyes unglazed.

The season ending so gloriously, what next? Why, sudden death playoffs, of course. With the bands playing every half time, in support of the teams.  Our weather has turned so on the kids that the band director is toying with letting the students march in warm street clothes, the decision for uniforms to be made at the last minute, so bring the uniform, too. Personally I believe that is her bribe to keep her band up to full force as her award winning band has yet to appear on the field in street clothes.

Tomorrow is the third sudden death for the football team; they survived the team that took them out last year, and one other. Tomorrow’s game is against a team they defeated already during the school year. The team is becoming quite cocky, Emily reports, but that goes two ways. Their confidence can carry them to another victory; their overconfidence can end the season. We’ll see.

Bringing me to the present. If the team wins tomorrow, they play again next Saturday. Thanksgiving weekend. Emily began softening me up by reciting all the people she knows who have plans for that weekend. Oddly, they’re all band members, not football players. She was, of course, working up to her Thanksgiving weekend, when one of her parents will be lifting the children from the shelf for the first time in three or four months, and taking his “family” across state for a long weekend with his partner’s parents.

“I guess,” Emily said, “I’ll just have to tell the band director I have a family emergency.”

“Was this a known possibility when you joined marching band?”

“Well, yes, but I would like to spend the weekend with my family.”

I let her bask in that thought for several days before I told her if there was another playoff game that weekend, she would be marching.

The bedroom on the other side of the hall exudes grumpy since then. Given her twelve years of religious upbringing prior to occupying that bedroom I shake my head and wonder when the moral compass will engage.

Socks of many colors

I gave up the search for good cotton socks for summer some years ago, when I realized I could knit them. Not as easily as purchasing socks, but in the absence of decent socks, my last resort.

The idea actually came to me in a JoAnn Fabric store, not the ideal source of sock cotton. I went up and down the yarn aisles, and found nothing smaller than dishcloth cotton. I took a trip down the crochet cotton aisle, and was completely unimpressed with the current offering. Where is the fine DMC, eight ply, 30 weight my grandmother taught me with? Do they even make it?

I rounded a corner into embroidery floss. There on an end cap was a sampler packet of DMC floss, eight strands. I bought two sampler packs of primary colors , fired up the number two double points and made a pair of socks.

The first sock I knit from the top of the sampler to the bottom, the second from the bottom to the top.  One might argue they met in the middle, but only I knew that. No one even noticed one sock was half the rainbow, the other the other half. This was fifteen years ago, before mismatched socks were sold on purpose.

No, people just said “Nice socks!”

Except one little boy.

Somewhere in public a child screamed. I looked around and saw a small boy, clinging to his mother, pointing at my socks and screaming. His mother tried to turn him away, he couldn’t quit looking and screaming “Her socks don’t match.”

Eventually his mother picked him up and carried him off, but he continued to hang over her shoulder, wailing and pointing.

He couldn't have had a bad Dr. Seuss experience; it must have been a clown.

One sock recovered

Several weeks ago I put away my summer socks and brought out the winter socks. I have a sock affection like some people have a shoe affection (which I used to have). My socks have to be all cotton or all wool, and no elastic. None. Zero.

Wool socks are easy. I knit them. Cotton, extremely difficult to source. I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect cotton sock. Not too thick. No elastic. The brand I used to buy disappeared. That happens with bras, too. Good ones disappear in one fashion cycle, to be replaced by the newest version of feminine figure.

Why couldn't I find a nice, thin cotton sock, like the Buster Browns I remembered? Buster Browns! I tracked them down in a flash; they’re still available. In packs of six! That’s a marketing device. Weeks come in sevens, why not socks? I purchased two packs of six, each rather expensive. But, they were made in America, and I wanted cotton socks without elastic.

All went well the first year or two; my socks had a mate each week, the tops folded nicely and away to the closet. Even if I came up one sock short, I could find it in the underwear, or stuck to a shirt. But one day, I couldn't. It was nowhere. Eventually I blamed the cat, and stuck the lonely white sock to the back, just in case. In more than a year the mate has not come back.

The week I washed my cotton socks for the last time before putting them up for winter, one was missing. This time a beige sock. After shaking down the laundry I moved out every piece of furniture in the bedroom, the better to look under. And clean, while I was there.

No sock. I retraced steps, scoured the laundry room, no sock. The beige single joined the white single several weeks ago.

As soon as I walked into the laundry room today, I saw it. The beige sock, crumpled against the wall. I cannot blame the cat; he won’t go into the basement.

My sister had a complex theory once, that missing socks hitched a ride with the towels, and once in the towel drawer made for the black hole vortex at the back, anxious to join the universe of missing objects. I was about to give socks that much credit. That is, until the beige sock lay crumpled on the floor. Could it have been spit back?

Opinions are like brains—everyone has one

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

And you know I do not read this to mean every person is a de facto member of the militia. It is my opinion our armed forces are the Militia. 

I have lived through martial law. In the 1967 riots in Cleveland, Ohio, the Ohio National Guard camped in the field by our apartment building, under the bedroom window, by my new baby’s crib. They were under the living room windows and the kitchen windows too. I had every confidence guns were under control. Before I am reminded innocents fell to the National Guard in 1970, in my opinion that tragedy was perpetrated by our governor, James Rhodes.

It is my opinion any weapon in the possession of any civilian belongs under lock and key. It does not need to be holstered on a hip, on public display and is does not need to be hanging down a back or over a chest, counterbalanced by a bandoleer.  In my opinion, that is a public display of power, not a need for protection.

The legislators who make the laws of the land seem not to hold my opinion. The current laws allow guns to be carried concealed or openly in all but, I believe, six states. I object to Ohio’s concealed and open carry, and take my opinion to the ballot box.

Our local and national legislators’ ears are not turned toward much of the public on gun issues. That leaves me with another right as a citizen—to object, and to boycott. Protests and me go way, way back. They are not effective overnight, but if the cause is right, the ground swell can become a crescendo that catches the attention of lawmakers, who realize their seat is in jeopardy unless they have an epiphany.

I’m sure there is a large audience barely aware many equal rights of women today were secured by their mothers. I hope they are watching and participating in securing equal rights of the LGBT community today. It’s how change happens.

In my opinion, the only visible gun should be carried by a soldier in a parade, a policeman on duty. There should be no invisible guns in civilian pockets or glove boxes of their cars. In my opinion it would be foolhardy to walk up to a person with a gun and say “Excuse me, please take that weapon home, disarm and store it safely.” My power does not match that gun.

I will, however, exercise my power of the purse against any public business that does not take a sweeping stand against guns carried openly or concealed among the public. It’s been years since I've shopped in a store selling guns, but I have no problem putting them on my public list, too.

In my opinion it’s also not too difficult to shop my beliefs, and I’ll write more about that, soon.

In the meantime, I got a chipmunk yesterday. They are so fast and I am not. They see me and spring through the grass, tail straight up, like Tigger with springs. 

I’m up for a good protest

Some of you may be a little too young to recall the really good protests. Like the American Revolution; it made the history books, it was so effective. In my lifetime I've helped a few along, but it’s been a long time. Not since the great salad bowl boycott of the seventies, in support of Caesar Chavez.

I wonder if we can do something about guns. Not about the right to own one, but about the need to display one’s full armament. I’m referring to the open carry laws, and the owners who believe it’s proper to stand in front of department stores, restaurants, grocery stores, locked and whatever else they say, displaying their values to small children hurried along by their parents.

We cannot make them go home, have open carry parties in the privacy of their own back yards. We can make the mega corporations of America pay for not taking a stand against public displays of weapons on their premises. There are more than a few corporations that have allowed demonstrations of open carry, whether through cowardice or complicity I do not know.

But, if we know what we think, there is something we can do. Boycott them. Ask our friends, our co-workers, people from high school who friended us on Facebook—boycott them. So we don’t dilute our efforts, let’s start with a big, easy one—Target. Let’s target Target. We want a public policy of not permitting a visible gun anywhere on store property, outside or in. Until it happens, we’ll take our money elsewhere.

I’d like to think we could put the genie back in the bottle one discarded regulation after another. No openly carried weapons. Then, no concealed weapons. No unsecured weapon in any home. But, we have to start somewhere, and let’s start with open carry and Target.

Find another place to buy the kid’s back to school socks and underwear, notebooks and Elmer’s. But, before you spend any money, ask Google if that chain has a policy against open carry weapon displays. If it does not, query another. Start with Target, but don’t stop there.

We are the people with the purchasing power. Let’s put our money where our mouth is. If you do not live in the USA, but believe guns belong behind closed doors, help us. Target has stores in Canada and India. Please, just don’t shop there. Thank you.

The bong under the steps

This is for Jocelyn.

Of all the stories I knew I’d never tell, this is the only one you’ll hear.

I came of age in the sixties, when, as Dylan mentioned, the times they were a changing.  Actually, the pieces always were there. My dad said when he was young and free in the 1930’s, marijuana grew wild along the railroad tracks and the hobos didn't want for a smoke. It took a bunch of decent kids and a bad war to make a trend a movement.

I learned how to drink in college, then how to smoke, and quickly how to do both in moderation. Hash left my repertoire when a friend’s bathroom toilet was a mile or more down the little black and white tile path, and I had to stand on my tippy toes to reach the water closet chain up on the wall.

Pot was not the same after that, either, and I generally passed. I had my alcohol epiphany when I was married. We came back from a party, paid the babysitter, who lived across the street. As I held the railing to go upstairs I realized if one of my children needed me in the night, it would be a struggle to get up, and, of course, their father wouldn't even hear them. I turned into the current day equivalent of the designated driver.

Our house was a great party house. Family room in the basement, kids asleep on the second floor. For friends and relatives, perhaps a half hour trip. The gang was down there maybe once a month.  And so it went on until 1973, and I divorced.

It was a different time back then. Divorce needed a cause. One party or the other must be aggrieved and blameless. I didn't know what would happen and I was terrified my husband would do something above and beyond putting me ass over teacup in debt. I stood in the family room and looked at the bong.

It was a work of art, actually. I cannot remember who of the group made it. It was clear plexiglass, and I recall a lot of colored bits. The medical student might have made it; he had access to that kind of plexiglass. My brother might have made it, but I don’t think he had the shop skills. I just don’t know.

How to get rid of it. What if Jim sent a social worker looking for it? I went outside to bury it. No, the neighbors will see me digging a hole. I put it in a trash bag. No, the trash pickup is still a week away, and he just left, knowing he would be divorced as soon as the proceedings went through the court.

Could I take it to work and put it in the dumpster? Too risky. Walking around the basement holding the evidence, I wound up in the laundry room. How about behind the water tank? Stupid. But look there; a panel, not a plasterboard wall where the steps go up. I wonder!

I pushed it in and found a lovely vacancy under the basement steps. The bong went in, I got the panel back in place and went on with my life. I wonder if the next owners of the house ever found it.

Primary elections

Today is primary day in Ohio; we’re sorting out who will be on the November ballot for governor on down. In Ohio primaries are run right along party lines. I tell the people at the desk to give me an R ballot for Republican candidates, a D for Democratic candidates, or I for Independent, casting my ballot for issues only, not candidates. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that.

A lot of voters skip the primaries, unless there is a hot issue. I remember being a righteous little prig somewhere about the age of ten. Our teacher had told us how important it is to vote, even in the primary elections, going on that day.

At home, for lunch, I asked mom if she had voted yet.  No, she only voted in the general election in November. “If you don’t vote in the primaries,” I importantly intoned, “you’re letting someone else select the candidates!” I ate my tomato soup and went back to school.

After school that night mom said yes, I was absolutely correct. She’d walked to the polling station and cast her vote. That made quite an impression on me. I've voted in every general and most primary elections since I've been old enough to vote.

But I've pulled a partisan ballot only three times in fifty years. (Seventy-one minus twenty-one equals fifty! Unbelievable!) Back in 1968, when we needed to elect George McGovern to run against Richard Nixon and end the war, I took a D ballot. It was a good windmill to tilt at, although it left me at the mercy of the Democratic propaganda for the next forty odd years.

2006 was a tight gubernatorial race. I expected Ted Strickland to win as the Democrat, but it would be a close and ugly race, in my opinion, if the Republican candidate was Ken Blackwell. So, I pulled an R ballot to cast my primary vote for his opponent, Jim Petro.  Ted Strickland did win.

The presidential primaries made for a busy polling station a year later. I signed in, moved to the next station and asked for a D ballot. “Challenge!” rang out. A “what the hell” moment for me, which is pretty much how I put it to the young man. It seemed since I had been an R in the previous primary I must forego one partisan primary before switching parties

.

With a good measure of “young man’s” thrown in, I said my first partisan ballot had been cast long ago and never again until the previous year, until I needed to help sort out the Republican candidates. He attempted to stop me there, but I had more to say, and told him Hillary needed my help, else I wouldn't be bothering with this partisan foolishness.

“I've heard enough,” he moaned. “Give her any ballot she wants.”

While we wait for the snow to melt...

This weather is less acceptable, daily.

This is not a black and white photo, according to the yellow parking space lines!

Today is Saturday, it's pouring down snow at three in the afternoon.

And another winter storm forecast for Wednesday.

Sigh.

I have solved a longstanding problem of mine.

What to do with the box of tissues in my car.

My glove box.

Inside my glove box. The usual, the manual, my registration and insurance card.

What is that container on top, you ask?

The refrigerator! Not kidding!

Seventy one years old and technology is coming at me from all over my new car.

A phone in the radio, a refrigerator in the glove box.

Be still my heart.

Ignore the sorry condition of the box; it has been kicked all over this car.

Then it came to me, as we drove along.

"Emily, see if the tissues fit in the refrigerator."

They do.

Word verification and cataracts

My first pair of glasses came at age ten.  Until then I didn’t know I couldn’t see.  But once I could see, I had to see it all, perfectly.  That from someone with 20/200 uncorrected vision, and astigmatism. All my ophthalmologists have been happy to ask “Better one or two?” until I came back to 20/20 vision.  My biggest problem was finding a nice pair of new frames to go around my new lenses every year or two.

For more than ten years I’ve heard about my little cataracts from any doctor who put a light into my eyes, including the ophthalmologist.  Little things.  Scarcely a mote, according to the doctors who mentioned it.  I know I cannot tell navy blue from hunter green and seldom need sunglasses, and assume that is due to the cataracts.  I could have worse problems.

This past year, though, the little buggers gained on me.  If I needed to read a road sign accurately and in time to know what it meant, I just dropped my right eye out of service and went with the left.  I knew I would be seeing the ophthalmologist in November and I could get that eye sorted out.

Not so fast, the doctor said.  There is eye surgery and there is eye surgery.  To correct vision a tiny slit of cornea is lifted, a snip here and there to make the lens more perfect, a little astigmatism work, plop the cornea back, done.  Ten minutes.  With cataract surgery an ultrasound probe goes into the slit to blast the cataract to smithereens so it can be vacuumed out.  Then a permanent lens is inserted. No cataract is removed before its time.  Dangers outweigh benefits and all that.  Not time for mine, yet.

We did go through the better one, better two drill until the doctor was satisfied I could see better through the cataract.  Thanks!  New glasses next week.  Purple with a little bling.

Which brings me to word verification.  Nobody likes it.  People with cataracts probably like it even less than nobody likes it.  Those numbers catch me up three and four times in a row.  Maybe bloggers who use word verification could give comment moderation a go.  We can wait to see ourselves in print.