Rita's Birthday Presence (Not Presents) SURPRISE!

 Today was my sister's birthday.

So, of course, I had a doctor's appointment. I have had an appointment nearly every birthday this year. I even had to have Rita drive me to one on her son's birthday, which was shameful. It was a drive I could normally make myself, but for whatever reason couldn't this time. 

When I had this appointment come up on her birthday, a more difficult drive, and a case of take this appointment or wait three months for the next one, I knew I didn't want to do that to her on her day.

She probably wouldn't have minded too much. She likes to drive. She likes to help. And I could buy her lunch at one of her favorite places if she took me. 

Unless, of course, she had other plans with friends, or lunch with Josh or Ron or something. Not impossible for her, and sometimes it feels like encroaching to ask -- an invasion of privacy, which is indeed a BIG DEAL to me.

Without consulting her, I decided my gift to her would be a day of respite from me and my not-so-pressing needs. 

I could do this myself.

I would do this myself. 

(And tell her about it later. I'm not completely altruistic.)

Appointment was afternoon, so car would be good for the trip. No rain or humidity. Not too chilly. Not too hot. 

I had got both an address and directions from the office I was going to, with a predetermined idea of where it was, based on the numerical address and what I knew of the area. 

So off I went. 

Made good time. Took me 45 minutes to make a 45 minute drive, so that was good. Got me there about a half hour early, because I was unsure of exactly which building I was to go to, and those medical outbuildings can be clumped together in some really awkward and barely accessible configurations.

So I drove around.

And around.

And around.

And around some more.

I pulled up Google maps on my phone, and tried to get it to speak to me. I even remembered to turn the sound up on the phone so that I might be able to hear what it said. Yay me. (Too bad my car didn't want to assist me in hearing, but since I was mostly touring parking lots, I had plenty of freedom to pull over and recheck the directions.)

The directions given had me making the same round-and-rounds that I had already been on. 

I came out, once again, onto the main entry point/parking lot, and I'll be darned if I didn't see a Rita's-type vehicle coming from the Mediplex to exit. And I wasn't even in Williamsburg, where another Rita-vehicle lives that I pass going to doctor.

This was a good one, too. It even had the Bengal plate on the front. I wondered if it had any other Bengals stuff on it, like hers, and the thought crossed my mind that it would be just my luck that she had been coming down there at this time anyway, and it would NOT have been an intrusion or a reliance that was an imposition. 

Wouldn't that just be my luck?

That was my luck. 

Oh well, odd as it was, it was a bit of good luck. She knew her way around down there, and she knew more about the entire area than I did, so maybe she could help me out.

She likes being able to help people out, so that could be my passive birthday gift to her maybe. 

Although it was strange.

I gave her the address, she put it in her phone, I showed her what my phone was reading, and we set off with her leading me -- around in the same old big circuit I had already driven so many times. (That made me feel better. At least she was the same lost as me, based on the information I had.)

Finally, we stopped again, and she said, "we're gonna have to call them," so I looked up the number and called it. She thoughtfully spoke for me -- I am not good at voice communication, although I don't usually mess up this badly.

The result is that we were on the wrong damn road!

We got much better directions this time, and she volunteered to once again lead the way, for which I was grateful. Who knows what crazy loop-de-loop I'd end up on on this other road with the same possibilities of problems. 

So my birthday present to Rita ended up being a gift to me -- of her presence. 

As I waited for the doctor and entourage, I tried to think where I may have miscommunicated. And I do think I figured it out. The first directions I had got was from someone who asked me if I knew where the hospital was. I said I did, yes, straight down Beechmont and turn on Five Mile. (There's another turn -- which is the roundabout  hill-climbing road I got lost on --and signs to follow, but I shortcutted those right out of the conversation.)

Anyway, she said "That's right, and our building number is 7575." 

I turned right instead of left, and onto another road, when I should have turned left and stayed a minute. So I had input the number with the wrong road and therefore, since I did not know it was the wrong road, I spent over a half hour looking for an address that wasn't there. I also helped my sister get lost in this non-existent place. 

Happy birthday, Rita, and I hope you can appreciate the fact that I tried to save you from me-dramedy on your own day.

 

Keys to the Kar

I am such an IDIOT! 

Or maybe just brain dead. 

Took Tammy to Kroger and decided at last minute to take her car. So we went to the store, came back out, and got in. I took keys off the keyring and put in ignition, but the key would not turn. It would not go forward, backward, jiggle up or down or anything. 

We called home and David told us to do all the stuff we had already done. It still didn't work. 

Ended the phone call and Tammy was still trying to get it to work. 

I started to say something about all the jiggly things maybe weighing it down too much, when I suddenly noticed that there were NO jiggly things. So I checked my keyring.

Yup. That's what I did. 

Sitting in a hot parking lot with the sun beating down on us, we were trying to start the Escort with keys belonging to the Crown Vic.
(On the plus side, they didn't work. That's always good to know.)

Starling Road on a rainy night

I wish I could have taken pictures on my drive home. The shiny road through the dark trees, the huge sky with rolling clouds and intermittent sparks and splashes of lightning; orange and blue and white. I pulled off a couple times to try to get a video but of course the lightning stopped when I did, or just wasn't as impressive. My motion going toward it somehow added to the visual drama. It was beautiful and otherly.
At one point on the road, I slowed way down. It appeared that I was approaching something like a large pillar, just a wide dark shape, going up and up. I wondered at first if it was the water tower, although I was pretty sure I hadn't come that far yet, and also I thought the tower was farther off the road, and NOT on a sharp curve. Also, didn't it have multiple legs, not just one column?
I passed a house with porch lights, and there was a street/yard light farther on. The top of the column seemed to spread.
So maybe it was a tree?
There are some massive trees along that road, but again none that I thought were that huge and that close to the road.
The streetlight shone down from above the top.
The top of the hill.
The pedestal was the wet road rising up a hill, through normal sized third or fourth growth trees. The spread at the top was rising above these trees to open fields, and the plowed and tumbled sky with its flickering and inconsistent lights.

A slice of time.

It's been a grayish rainish day today and now that night is creeping in, the sunlight has taken on a misty mystic haze of almost-but-not-quite-a-rainbow light.

The air glows like golden dust.

The sun is behind the trees now. The trees are haloed in the diffused light. Not quite colors quiver as leaves tremble.

Along the alley, a long lazy ray of white light makes its way down the pavement, perfectly placed evenly with the edges. At those edges, where the light meets the grass, the color blossoms into golden fizz, dancing above the ground.

I reach for my phone, my only camera, and try to capture this ethereal moment that was already fading.

I cannot, of course. The magic is beyond both my skill and the phone cameras abilities.

I hope my words have helped you to see it. A slice of time such as this is meant to be shared,and i am sharing it with you.

Dollar Store Invasion.

www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-bad-business-for-the-neighborhoods-they-open-in?fbclid=IwAR3cqFpYVeM481_4wlCFaPw_gn4QL2sJMFTrJSlmO35VIOcKP2V_VvW3V64

As someone living in a food semi-desert, I disagree with some of this. Before dollar stores started popping up, we had to drive miles for reasonable assortments of groceries, OR we had to buy them at overpriced convenience stores and gas stations.
I do agree it places an additional strain on mom-and-pops, but so does any new business with the same prospects. We are fortunate here that we have a family owned (and expanding) set of convenience stores that are reasonably priced.

The only larger store in my current town is a save-a-lot. Dollar General and Family Dollar often have name brand foods for the same price or less than this bigger store. There are Kroger, Wal-Mart, and IGA stores in several different directions, but why go to them when the 'Dollar$' are both available and reasonable and don't use a lot of gas? And this is in an only semi desert for shopping. 

Part of the reason for new stores is that the older stores can no longer carry all the products that the citizens need. The buildings need to be larger, and with more adaptable for usage space.
In some cases the buildings, equipment, and utilities are no longer compatible. Or adaptable.
These are solid reasons for a new building.
(it's my hope that the old building's next life has been planned, because I hate stores that let old building sit and rot.)

As with most of life, there is no clear yes or no choice here. No black and white; no either/or. The situation is not good OR evil. It's more likely to be good AND evil, at the same time, in subtle shades of gray -- or maybe even loud brilliant colors.

It's life.
It's how things are. 

Betterhelp.com

There have been commercials for the betterhelp organization for a while. It is a part of the fresh(er) focus on mental health, and a building step in making online treatment more available.

The most frequent commercials are a man in a gym and a man in a parachute. 

The ad with the man in the gym is pretty good. One man sees another lifting weights from a bench (bench pressing?) and he gets stuck, The man hurries over to offer help and the man in need refuses, on grounds of family and pride and all that stuff. 

The man offering his help does not walk away saying, "choke then," or abandon the endangered man. While the action shown is not a resolution, it gets the point across that sometimes turning down help can be a passive surrender or suicide. And that the idea is  -- strange. 

But it is the other commercial that I want to talk about. 

The parachute ad takes my breath away. 

The person pulls the cord and the parachute doesn't deploy. He says something along the lines of "oh no, what will I do?"

Another skydiver near him says "grab hold of me; we can go down together." 

And no-parachute says "Oh no, I dont want to ruin your experience."

Like watching him go splat is going to convey joy to the experience? Knowing that it was preventable?

For quite a while, I dismissed that to the stupid commercial category in my brain, with the cat litter that says try it for yourself, and the man who doesn't want chicken blood in his chicken.

But this is more than that. 

It has layers.

Pretty wonderful layers, when you think about it.

That's the insidious things about mental illness. 

Often, when you need help, you don't want to ask for it. You want to do it yourself. Not involve others. 

Another trick it plays is to limit your vision and close your mind. 

In the skydiver's case, he sees jumping, chute opening, landing, is THE WAY it's done. Anything else is wrong. Any other way is wrong. He has already messed up the event for everyone. His chute didn't open and now everyone will know what a klutz (at best) he is, and they'll all hate him for ruining this day. 

But the other diver knows that a rescue can be effected, Things will change; the standard rules may have to be adapted, but they can both have a successful landing if they work together. 

He refuses, because of 'messing up the experience.'

As I said before, as if a big splat isn't going to do that anyway.

He can't see that, though. 

It's just not in his frame of reference. His mind is closed to any other possibility.

There is no solution that allows a standard outcome. Therefore, his reasoning ability stops at: there is no solution. Period. 

And that, my friends, is why and how people can and do commit suicide. They can see no other solution. No way out. 

Not even when there are others nearby saying this will work, this can be tried, this can help. Let me help.

The man falling cannot think beyond there is no solution, even though he is the one placing the period at the end of the sentence. In reality, there are commas and colons and other punctuation that will carry the thought beyond a full stop in that place.

This is the nature of a mental illness.

This is the illness, in many cases. 

This illness can be cured. 

There are as many ways to a cure for the mind as there are for the body. Medicines, therapies, training. As the body can be trained, so is the mind. If it wasn't so, we would all remain helpless crying babies, and we would not survive long. There would be no survival, no growth, no adaptation.

And, for me, this commercial, brief as it is, manages to convey some hint of that being the wrong message.

As long as one is capable of seeing beyond the "usual" "expected" "should-bes"

As long as the mind is open. 

Monday's Misadventures

My Monday , the last day of February 2022

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Well the day started out when I reached out to turn off my CPAP machine and my glasses jumped off the stand and hid. I swear I heard them giggling while I was trying to find them.

Also, my internet was out. Again.

My sister Rita happened to be in town and she came  by and crawled around on my floor patting the carpet and moving stuff around, instead of me doing it for the thousandth time. Or was it the millionth?

She didn't have it easy finding them, although I think the only giggles she heard were ours, at the ridiculous situation.

But she did find them, in a place that had been checked multiple times. 

But she did it!

Yay Rita!

Now that I have my glasses again, I can get started on today's life, which was going to laundromat and grocery store and pharmacy. 

I went to Marathon laundromat in Mt Orab because they are a better value laundromat and because I have prescriptions to pick up at Kroger's, which is across the road. I can get it all done. 

Every other machine is out of order.
Because of that I had to use two smaller washers, so I ran out of money. 

No biggie, I'll go to the ATM at the attached Marathon Mart. What a joke. 

The ATM is not being serviced. 

They don't do cash back at the register, either. 

 I don't get to dry my clothes. At least not here and now. Unless I want to leave my laundry and my parking space.Guess I'll stop off in Bethel to do that job. My luck, their ATM will also not be working.

I was running out of belief in my day.
I should have stayed in bed when my glasses went into hiding, and my internet was gone.

When I went to Kroger, I decided I may as well shop since I needed to Cashback. (ATM costs @$5, Cashback is fifty cents). So after I have cashed out and put my card away, the girl tells me she is running a cashless register. 

I have to take my receipt to customer service to get my $20.

At customer service there was a line (of course) and the person right in front of me was buying money orders - you know how time consuming that can be- and then his bank wouldn't do the card transaction the way it was supposed to. "This is why I buy money orders," he said. (Been there done that.)





So I came home, my clothes still wet, and put groceries away. My clothes shouldn't mildew overnight, and if they do, I'll just have to figure it out.

And when I got home, I still had no internet . I am in an outage. Yay me.

At least this time I have data and telephone.

When I came out of Kroger's, I couldn't find my car. I walked right to where I had parked it and there was this shiny almost black car sitting there.

So I walked around the other lanes, went back to store and walked back out to the same spot where I had parked it.
And it was there this time!
I owe Hailey a big apology. My car really does look completely different when you approach it from the passenger side. (She made the same mistake once when I picked her up at school.)

But I had no need to look for the helpers, because they were looking out for me. At the laundromat, in the store, and several times in the parking lot.

That makes it, overall, a very good day.

"George has passed."

 "George has passed."

Word began circulating early Sunday in our small town. The hushed tones, shaded with loss and awe, and the meandering wandering of "Is this true?" ans "How did you hear?", because it was somehow as unbelievable as it was believably inevitable.

George. 

The old fisherman.

The old farmer

The old friend.

Our man about town.

Our story teller.

Our history.

Most small towns have or have had a "George." The person who knows everyone, goes everywhere. The one who talks with everyone, and listens in return. The one who just is his marvelous self.

This is a loss, as it always is, when a piece of history drops into the infinity of the past. How strange the streets will seem, when the weather warms and human hibernations come to an end. 

Someday, sometime, a former resident will ask about him, and someone will have to share the news.

The news will be as striking as it was Sunday morning, when it was a word of mouth shout. 

This news will never be old, until all of us at the end of his story have followed him. 

Until then, let us keep his memory alive.

More importantly, let us keep his meaning alive, to share and care.

Services will be private, as is fitting. In the end, the public man 'belongs' with those he's chosen. The public man, everyone's friend, belongs firstly to himself. 

Let us give him the dignity of true respect.

Let us Remember him.

https://www.ecnurre.com/obituaries/George--R--Rooks?obId=24092725#/obituaryInfo

Thoughts and Prayers

 We see or hear it every day. Good news, or more often bad, is shared on social media, and the poster is flooded with thoughts and prayers, and hands clapping together. 

There are those who see this as the only response to these small worries and larger personal disasters.  Because they don't see the respondent pick up the phone to call, or their car keys to head over to the afflicted home or family.

Some even wonder if those posting thoughts and prayers are even actually thinking or praying. Or are they making the polite response? Like "How are you?" as a greeting, but not really listening or interested to know how the other actually is.

Of course they have actually had a thought concerning the matter. They could hardly have read the post, let alone replied, without having a thought. As for praying, what is prayer but a directed thought?

But these conversations can make one wonder. They can make one take a long, deep look at their own personal version of "thoughts and prayers" being a helpful thing to do.

For those who have Faith in a deity, it's a no-brainer. They know. Faith is belief without proof, and they don't need proof. The truly faithful will do 'extra' things like add the names to a prayer list and call to ask others to pray  also. They may do this, and be trying to think of how else they can be helpful to those in need. Or they may not. That is between them, tyheir faith, and their deity.

There are others who wonder. Can "thoughts and prayers" make a difference in the outcome? Can thoughts and prayers effect a cure, decelerate a situation, or have any type of result?  (There have been research studies done, with mixed results.)

Will the differences, if they do occur, be lasting or ephemeral? Does it matter more in the long run, or the short term?

Even more importantly, why would they work? Is there any kind of science that can possibly explain this phenomenon? What could it be? How would it work?

The place to start is with a thought. What is a thought? What makes a thought? 

It is a spark. A minute (or notso small) creation of electrical energy in the brain. Not necessarily seen, or smelled, or identified by any other sense. But energy where there was none somehow has become a fact.

According to science, everything is or becomes energy. Many energies cycle through the states of liquid, solid, gas. Many energies become different forms of energy, as a result of a spark. 

Once, there was thought to be three states of matter -- solid,liquid, and gas. 

Now a fourth state is recognized. Plasma. Plasma is matter turned to energy. There are experiments with the energy of plasma becoming matter. Some scientists say it is impossible; others say they have achieved success at molecular or atomic levels. What greater things can be achieved once they learn and acquire understanding of how this works!

It is my belief -- unproven at this time -- that that may be how thoughts and prayers work. It is energy that can (although no one knows how) be directed in a certain manner for a certain purpose.

It may be that some people can do this, without consciousness, just as there are some who can draw or carve or create music or songs. 

It may be that there are people who can be trained to do these same things -- paint a landscape, vibrate a reed into organized tones (that create an emotion), direct energy toward a stranger who needs healing. 

Of course, it is equally true that these things don't work that way, that they happen randomly or not at all, that they can never be taught if they do eist.

But they might.

Science is finding out. 

Science is learning.

Most of all, Science is keeping open to the possibilities.

Winter Morning. December 2019

This cold winter's morning, as the darkness edges away from the horizon, I find myself wishing that I was--elsewhere. And maybe elsewhen.

 
What would I be doing, and where would I be?

 
Sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, wearing flannels and wool, wrapped in a blanket, a quilt, a comforter. Which or how many of these would depend on the temperature of the air and the prevailing winds.
In my hands a hot drink. It doesn't matter what. Tea, coffee, cocoa, a toddy, hot lemonade.
The steam from the drink both warms and wets my nose. The warmth of the contents warms the cup and the hands that hold the cup.
Or do the hands warm the cup, keeping the fresh warmth from escaping?
No matter. It and I am warm and we hold one another in warmth.

 
Before me are treetops. Behind me, behind my home, are trees.
Layers of trees.
Rows of trees.

Rising solemnly in ranks and ledges and lines.
They stand silent, or Not-so-silent, in the breaking of day. They rustle, they murmur, reminding me of stretching and waking and the hushed voices of rising.
I smile and sip and look.
Below me, I see the stream moving, smoked silver in the pre-dawn. I hear the shushing of the water as it falls into the pool. I cannot see the falls -- not yet -- but I know they are there. I feel the cleansed air against my skin. I smell the freshness. I hear the soothing sounds, and
I walk away from my window looking out on the busy highway, and I wish -- Oh, how I wish! -- that the place I have been was somewhere I could actually be.