Ou

     The title of today's entry is not a typo.  But just as "typo" is short for "typographical error," today "ou" is short for "ouch."
     I'm pretty full of myself most of the time.  Admitting that I'm full of myself doesn't make me less full of myself.  It only means that I'm aware that my ego's normal state is one of over-inflation.
     My mom is 77 today.  She hasn't been to a doctor in well over two decades.  She's been pretty healthy, with only the normal aches and pains that come with having birthdays.  She doesn't want to be told she has high cholesterol or blood pressure because then she'd feel like she'd have to do something about it.
     I understand that kind of thinking.  Ignorance is bliss.  If it works, don't fix it.  What you don't know won't hurt you.  After all, none of us get out of here alive. 
   The other camp, the prevention camp, prefers to try and take a regular inventory based on (hopefully) statistical factors affecting mortality.  They'd call my mom's reasoning denial, something that doesn't bode well for a healthy mind, body, or spirit.
     I never imagined a world without my parents.  Then one day 12 years ago, my sister called to tell me our father had suffered a serious aneurysm and was in intensive care at a hospital in western New York.  We both bought plane tickets, she in L.A. and I in Phoenix, and met in Buffalo, rented a car, and drove to Medina, where he died two weeks later.  I'm grateful that during those two weeks there were times when he was fairly lucid and I got to talk to him a bit.  
     On my 42nd birthday, I kissed his funny old forehead and told him I'd see him in a few weeks.  Two days later, 25 February 1999, I got a call from my aunt, his sister, saying that he was "gone."
     Gone he was.  The forehead I kissed as he lie in the casket was not my dad's forehead.  It was the shell he inhabited while his spirit lived on earth.  He certainly was gone, and as far as I could tell, he'd never be back.  Those things hurt in a way not many other things can.
     I miss my dad.  I've missed him every day since that cold day in February 1999.  My kids miss him.  His wife misses him.  He is no longer here, and we must go on.
     I talked to my mom today and she's going to go to the doctor and get things checked out.  A neighbor helped her find a doctor and is going to go with her.  I felt much better after hearing that, as I began to see how I was becoming a bit over-confident that my mom would always be here.  
     Even at 53, I don't want to be an orphan.  My mom and dad did the best they could with who they were, and I love them.  When it comes time for the next one of us to check out, I want to have been a little more patient, a little more tolerant, and most of all, a little more kind.
     I hate saying goodbye.
    
    

 

I'm an Egomaniac with an Inferiority Complex

     I was musing/smiling about those song lyrics from the Steve Miller song "The Joker" that say "People keep talkin' 'bout me, baby..."  Also, the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "The Breeze," ("Well, now, they call me the Breeze...").
     I was laughing inwardly (as opposed to "lol" or Laughing Out Loud), was because I was thinking of the one-liner my friend Scott gave me... "I used to worry about what other people thought of me, until I realized they don't."  I just thought, popular music is funny sometimes, and it's easier to get away with saying stupid shit than it is in real life.  Like, "People keep talkin' 'bout me, baby..."
     Really?  Does anyone, at any age, believe other people spend a lot of time thinking or talking about them? 
     I know, I know.  I'm probably making way too much of it, but isn't making way too much of not much kind of what blogging is all about?  Pretending like I have something new or important to say, when everyone knows there's nothing new under the sun.  A lot of re-packaged old stuff that seems new, but trust me, it's not.
     It's fun to think that someone else is going to notice the salsa spot half the size of a dime on my shirt sleeve, but no one will.  I'll change shirts in the belief that others are paying attention to me, but they're not.  They're thinking about whether or not they have any spots on their clothing.  At least in my culture that's how it goes.

Learning by Frustration

I like things.  I like things that work.

This is a side-door, sneaky, dishonest way of saying that I hate things that don't work.

I'll get right to the point.  This morning I'm frustrated (again) by computers, specifically the two ancient laptop/notebook/whatever computers I own.  We'll call one the Little White One and the other we'll call The Other One.  They're both PCs, not Macs.

I know the Little White One is about six years old.  I'm not sure how old The Other One is, but I know it's four or more years old, and that's why both of them are ancient.  Not old, ancient.  That's just the way it is in the tech world, right?

I like to wake up about 4:00 a.m., walk a mile, come home, build a fire in the fireplace, find my glasses, and sit down on the couch with a Thermos of coffee and a little white Styrofoam cup that I keep refilling.  I do this because that way I can drink an entire Thermos of coffee one tiny cup at a time and not feel like I had a big ol' cup of coffee.  But mainly I do it because I have a very difficult time finishing things I start (including cups of coffee) and that way, if my coffee sits too long and gets cold, I merely take the top off the Thermos, pour the tepid coffee back in, and voila!  A Thermos of coffee just a little less hot than it was before, but still hot.

Back to the point.  The Little White One connects to our wireless internet connection, but it's really slow.  So all the stuff I said about wanting to be patient, well, I really don't want to be patient when it comes to computers.  I want them to work and I want them to work right now.

The Other One connects to the internet sometimes and sometimes it doesn't and I don't know why.  I do know that it frustrates the hell out of me because I get caught up in this vortex of trying to fix the connection, with just enough little pop-up messages to give me hope, and end up spending an hour or more accomplishing nothing.  Nothing except changing my mood from serene to frustrated and angry.


I have no more time to complain about this this morning, so I'm going to work.  


God bless the slow Little White One.