"Spells Are For Witches"

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: "Spells" are things witches cast on others. NOT to be confused with anything of a medical nature like a stroke, heart attack, bout of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, loss of vision, low blood pressure, flu, strep throat, hypoxia, or ANY OTHER ILLNESS.

Today started out like any other day...which isn't saying much, but nevertheless, we were going about our business as usual. Church. In a small town. Many abnormal things were going on already, but that is really beside the point (except for the fact that I should have taken note and expected the weirdness to continue with escalation). Attrition and I had finished our regular gig in the a.m. service and I was aimlessly wandering from the nursery with Squib toward the donuts (Squib lives for donuts). The church secretary found me and told me that the pastor needed to find my father.

OK.

So, I grabbed Squib his donut, snagged the secretary and told her that I was headed toward my dad. She snags the pastor. Pastor meets me in the covered drive and says the following: "Your grandfather called the office and said your grandmother has had a spell of some sort and he wants you all to come home immediately.

A spell. Cripes. This is not her first "spell." Some have been rather scary and had all the signs of stroke including asymmetrical facial expressions and loss of vision. She recovered. Still, this morning, when I was casually informed that she had a "spell" I immediately shifted into overdrive. I tucked Squib under my arm like a football and began dragging him from person to person. These days there is one hour during the week when all the healthy people in the family are away and all the cancer patients and invalids are at home. Sounds terrible, but, alas, true. You guessed it. This was that hour. And this was the third time something medically untoward had taken place.

So, we blasted out of there like our tails were on fire. Only to find that the "spell" in this case was a bout of nausea. Maybe low blood pressure. And the import to our returning home was that grandpa was freaking out.

Spell.

Needless to say, we have been undergoing some medical language reeducation this afternoon. "Spells are for witches." That's a direct quote from my father. (There was snickering from the peanut gallery). At that point, I interrupted with a bit of a sarcastic "oooh-kay" and took over from there being careful to warn against the use of "episode" and "fit."

Yeah, spells are for witches. Apparently heart attacks are being passed around freely like the flu. I know I've had at least one, maybe two today alone. A myriad of wrinkles, a fresh shock of gray hair. And...probably a few years shaved off my life.

I need a nap, an anti-psychotic, or a very, very strong drink. I'm gonna sit...for a spell.

Scat

No Fruit, No Nuts, Just Networks

I must say from the start that this entire weekend has been a total marvel in technological failure and planning run amok. "Amok, amok, amok!" (Does anyone remember Hocus Pocus with Bette Midler? OK, so it's just me...love that).

The office at Green Acres that supports our family's seismic oil and gas prospecting business was, well, having "technical difficulties" all week. No, I do not (TECHNICALLY!) work there anymore. However, no one left there can really do what I did, so the "deal" is that the phone is going to occasionally ring. It rang Wednesday while I was here at the Bunker (Attrition's house). That took about two hours and I thought it was a tough fix, but a solid one. Problem is, it wasn't really my fix to make and therein lies the REAL problem.

Green Acres is in the boonies. The thing with the boonies is that only just this month have we had more than one option for an Internet service provider. We've been a captive of the phone company (who I'd love to name, but won't) for years now and typically pay about $185/mo (or higher when we need other services) for a variable IP DSL service that's slow as Christmas. On top of that, no one at their Internet help desk really knows how to configure the service properly. In fact, they don't even attempt to keep access to their network configuration utilities secure...which is...well, stupid. I don't even think they know how to view your configuration w/o you knowing--they have you bring it up at home and read what's in the blanks to them. That's just bizarre!

So, the "fix" always starts with a phone call. During which I play very, very stupid. And I make sure their adminstrative login and password are the same and that the IP address is the same and I pay attention to anything else that they may have changed or seems to look different and try to ask well-directed, but stupid-sounding questions.

For some reason, no one at this particular telephone company ISP seems to understand that if my "Internet" is "down" but I can still navigate to THEIR server (which I am ONLY connected to via the Internet) to access the configuration applications using MY modem, then, in fact, it is a configuration problem and my modem is not broken. However, they conclude each five minute phone call with "Well, it sounds like your modem is broken. We'll send a new one out with a service person on Monday."

Cripes.

After the call, I'm on my own. More often than not, the problem is caused by an actual outage after which they bring service back online, but do so incorrectly, so the error could be anywhere and like any sort of scientifically methodical effort you can only alter one thing at a time if you are to solve the problem in any sort of sane manner.

So, in lieu of going to the plant sale on Saturday (Yes! I missed it!!!!), I dinked with someone else's network (just my little part in it). And eventually gave up. I have never given up before. Ever...

Attrition tried. He gave up. He never gives up. Ever...

We watched war movies, went to bed, couldn't fall asleep, both met on the porch, listened to weird noises and almost re-educated the idiot neighbor who decided to cross our land with a (very bouncy) flashlight at midnight (yes, he shined it in the living room), got up early, went to church, hauled tree parts to the fire, passed a very happy and ash-covered Squib to his grandparents for shuttling to his dad and finally dragged our aching bodies back into the office.

I said something colorful and plugged everything back in. We tried again. Someone at my favorite telephone company had reset SOMETHING again because one of the logical fixes that I tried yesterday actually worked today. Go figure. It's not my win, though, 'cause Attrition was actually the one at the keyboard. THAT is how it always works out...he is SO...something...

Wow, what a rant...

Finito.

Scat

Efficiency Living When You Love Books, Work at Home, and Teach From Home

I have 12 foot ceilings...perhaps they're ten, but nevertheless, they are bare in my portion of our little dwelling. 10 foot ceilings and an irregularly seven-sided room. The seven walls are a trick, but easily adapted to. What I would NOT give, though, for the top three feet of all the wall space to be COVERED with bookshelves!!! I could easily put my things up there and then Squib wouldn't have to concern himself with what he can and cannot touch and/or play with. Instead, we use a recovered plywood bookshelf that's ugly as sin, but does the trick.

I'm really thankful for digital books, but there really is something about being buried in that paper-smell while your imagination zooms to other times, lives, realities, and wealths of information. I have pared my library down to the essentials that I MUST keep on hand because I have 12 foot ceilings...perhaps they're ten, but nevertheless, they are bare in my portion of our little dwelling. 10 foot ceilings and an irregularly seven-sided room. The seven walls are a trick, but easily adapted to. What I would NOT give, though, for the top three feet of all the wall space to be COVERED with bookshelves!!! I could easily put my things up there and then Squib wouldn't have to concern himself with what he can and cannot touch and/or play with. Instead, we use a recovered plywood bookshelf that's ugly as sin, but does the trick. Every one's library speaks for itself. I know, too, what my friends keep, and I try not to keep what they have if I can manage to turn loose of them. Pam, the librarian, is usually pretty good about keeping what I give her in circulation 'cause I tend to go non-linear when my books aren't there for the finding. I forgave her my "Genes V" text on general principle. I have managed to pare my books down to fit Michael's entire collection on the shelf and then mine are on the rest of the shelf and in key places around the room. Here's our measly shelf and the speakers for my iPhone so we have a little stereo and audiobook action going on in our little room.

Of course you see the briefcase(s) and the green chair...that's the office :) Nope, not joking....my personal office :) I have another large one, but this is where I go to not be bothered unless its' a rugrat...they have free rights to interrupt me at will. The beds are folded in like you would a bunk bed with the trundle sticking out from under the top twin at a 90 degree angle and Squib sleeps on the bottom short section and I sleep on the top full-length twin. It doesn't seem like it, but he has quite a bit of floor space to play in. All of his toys are stored on the shelf, in plastic storage boxes in our "hall closet," in his small wagon that parks under the bed or in the big wagon that lives in the hall.

Armoires are absolutely the most wonderful things if you buy the right kind...some shelves, some drawers, some hanging...aaaaahhhh I love my armoire and as a plus the only trinkets from my "big house" days are on top of the armoire where they can't be bothered by little fingers. It also gives you more covered storage for "stuff" that you need but can't seem to place.

And, yes, my piano is in the closet. Our photographs are on top and the clothes are in the side pocket areas of the closet. There was a rod that was supposed to stretch all the way across, but I vetoed that in lieu of musical pursuits. We carved a niche of a closet out of some wasted space in the hallway instead.

So here we are! Mom and kiddo living, working, learning, and having fun in a 12 x 12 space. Hard to keep everything straightened up? Absolutely! Need a shopping spree from the Container store? Yep!! Lacking in that simple, minimalist calm? Definitely! But we're happy!!! And we're close! Squib and I loooooove that. Well, ok, sometimes we don't.

We'd be right at home in New York in a tiny walk-up. Heck, if we can finish the floors in our little room here and maybe paint the walls some optimistic color, we may never leave.....OK, not really. So here I go to put up my messes from yesterday to keep this place habitable and hoping a 4yr old won't bring it all down in a single second.....riiiiiiiiight.

ad nauseum...ad infinitum...add adventure

ad nauseum...

Kudos to the man or woman who coined that phrase.

This has been an "ad nauseum" sort of day. Just take the level of weirdness that I normally exist at, multiply it by ten, and then spread it evenly over what looks to be at least the next five to six months. Hence, the ad nauseum.

Here is an exact transcript of my conversation with three different persons this morning. This all took place between 10 am and 11 am and will seriously affect my life for AT LEAST the next six months and maybe more. OK, probably more. Uncannily, they all sounded relatively alike:

"Hey, Blah." (Them.)

"Hi! How ya doin?" (Me. I just love being called "Blah.")

"Great, great, you got a second?" (Them.)

"Sure." (One moment of scrambling to silence the phone of death. Another moment reminding myself that I don't really have a moment.)

"Listen, uh, we've been discussing some things and come to a decision regarding X."

(X can be anything your little blog-reading mind chooses to dream up, alligators, money, job future, money, clients, money, cat burglars, money, starvation in Africa, money, or the like, or money).

"Here's what we've decided:______________________." (The length of this blank in no way represents what was actually presented at this point. Be joyful.)

(Swallowing and sucking noises from my direction.)

"Now, nothing at all is going to change." (Them. OK...maybe part of the sucking noise is coming from them. Only a vacuum is responsible for that sort of mathematics.)

I am still listening at this point, but obviously trying to think of how nothing is going to change after that thing they put in the blank takes place. I'm wondering about this so hard that I miss part of the conversation, I'm sure. Not a very important part, though, 'cause at this point, they're sure nothing's changed and I heard the part in the blank so somebody's not done their math. Actually, I know the person who's done the math and that person elected this person to talk to me. Chicken. Go figure.

By the third time, I'm feeling like a star in a really sick episode of "this is your life" Only, the title has changed to "This Is Your Life and It Reeks."

ad infinitum...

As a direct result of one of the three aforementioned conversations, I was passed a white piece of paper by Papa. On the piece of paper was scrawled a monetary amount.

"Make our bank account match this." He thrust it at me and I took it with one eye lid scrunched low and the other raised in an incredulous manner as though he'd asked me to fart fairy dust. Turns out that's easier. I looked at our ledger and all the happy little rows of items that had cleared the bank and made sure that all the months' statements had been entered and that only what represented the time between last month's statement and the upcoming statement was outstanding. Hm. Balance did not match magic piece of paper. Nor could I contort the numbers to match magic piece of paper. Hmm.

First trip to talk to Papa. Have I mentioned just how very much Papa luuuuuuvs to mow? I mean luv here. So I find him out West of the house and stomp out to the tractor and holler at him at the top of my lungs that "THERE'S NO MATCHING BALANCE! COULD YOU GO TO THE BANK AND EITHER AUTHORIZE ONLINE BANKING OR GET A PRINT OUT OF CURRENT TRANSACTIONS?"

He looked at me quizzically and I could tell he made the decision to stay on the mower. "CALL BRANDY! TELL HER WHAT TO DO! SHE KNOWS US AND SHE'LL TAKE CARE OF IT" I assured him she would not and that he would have to be present, but that was promptly pshawed and he revved the engine and peeled out, well, like a lawn tractor peels out.

Immediately, I am cursing in my mind this whole process because I know banking laws! I know what's required! She's not going to do this for me! I still have to make the idiot phone call! In the process I'll probably get to talk to half the church (because half the church works at the bank) and who knows who else and basically say, "Hey! It's Scat! Yeah, we need online banking for the corporate account, and I know Papa has to come sign it, but I do the books so he had me call and try to see what I could do." They all snort and giggle which is what EVERYONE who knows my grandfather does. I get passed about from person to person (gotta have fun in a small town) and then to Brandy's voicemail where I left my now-practiced message and hung up!

Brandy, I am sure she laughed pretty hard first, called me back and told me exactly what I already knew. So. Here I go. Stomp stomp stomp. Papa takes it a little easier and decides he'll just stop by the bank on his way to the Post Office (a whole other story). Which he did.

Upon his return, he stomps up to me where I was innocently sitting at my computer and says "Now you know you can't just call Brandy and ask for online banking or a statement!!! I have to authorize it with my very own signature!" You don't say...

Adventure?

Well, at least around our house it was. Yes, tonight the bluetooth headphones made their debut. Everyone looks like they've stepped out of the Fifth Element or Star Trek and when they get calls, the seemingly randoms "Hello!s" are a little unnerving. But the rockin' bass and the handsfree options are awesome.

Buddy Scat has had the most trouble using his, so we had to have phone call practice. Probably looked like a hotel room at a trekkie convention with us sitting on the bed communicating by voice and by phone....oooooweeeeehhhaaaaaoooooooo.....

OK, so not the adventure I need or crave, but one baby-step closer for mankind :)

Next up on our adventure/agenda....voice calling. That's not MY agenda, but Buddy's.

My agenda is fixing to blow wide open all together. YAY! I am personally planning my exit to the out-of-doors for my own personal hiking season. May take me a while to put it together due to financial constraints and business crapola.

Next, Planning the Attack on Big Thicket!

Scat

Yup, blogging from the iPhone store...

Monday is, as usual, followed by Tuesday. This Tuesday finds me parked in the Apple store. Yep, parked here long enough to read my fave blog intake and to start one of my own.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but, on-the-whole I'm feeling right now like everything including the toaster belongs in the deep end of the swimming pool. Computers to toasters....take it all. You can even have the pump that keeps our 85 gallon reservoir pumped full from the well we get our water from. YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL!!! I'm ready for a mud hut, good company and the absence of that clickety-clack sound that seems to always be the background music for my life these days.

All I want is an iPhone, well, three to be exact... and I wish every one could be as accommodating as the iPhone man at the Apple store...AT&T is giving him the runaround and he's doing his darnedest to at least give me the one that we've owed Attrition for over a month now...YES, I have been trying to add at the bare minimum one line so that Attrition can do our diagnostics via iPhone. And living in Radiator Springs means you have to travel to Timbuktu if you actually want to go into a cell phone store. So, we order over the phone or Internet.

Only to find out after THREE WEEKS that the order had been cancelled.

So, as usual, Thor died his third or fourth death yesterday and I had to carry him part and parcel with myself to Attrition and Mystery's for a laying on of hands. Disgustingly enough, he booted right up. There were some problems but none reproducible. Crazy.

With the phone store right there and all, we decided to kill as many birds as possible with one stone (or maybe half a stone). Anyway, we hit the AT&T kiosk in the Mall....they directed us to the Apple store in the mall. The Apple store could help us with the addition of the extra phone, but they referred us to the AT&T store a little further south on the feeder (where Ninfa's used to be--I was hungry). After Chris (very nice and quick) salesperson got us set up a third of the way at the Apple store, we shuffled off to torture Rene at the Ninfa's location of AT&T.

Just so happened they were out of the iPhone we wanted....

I was ready to hurl.

I mean that.

And I don't hurl easily or often.

It takes us a minimum of an hour to get to an AT&T store and they're not gonna have what they advertise?! EEEK (again with the scrunchy stress face and unintelligible noises).

It's at times like these that I think, "Julia Roberts would not be having this problem."

Of course, she probably didn't go to buy her own phone..

Poor Rene got the brunt of Buddy's wrath over the cancellation of the order (that we had already corrected at the Apple store). We were there to upgrade our own phones...totally different story, so I sent him to the car to commune with his Kleenex box (bad sinus probs. = major grouch) while I spent at least an hour-and-a-half getting things square on our account.

And kudos to Rene at the 303 Sawdust, The Woodlands, TX 77380 store and his manager for accommodating us b/c you guys made my life SO much easier (Sort of. You also make it look like I have magical powers, so Buddy now makes me do all the dealing around here). Also to the FedEx man who, for whatever reason, came early! I walked out with EXACTLY what I needed and wanted!

Nevertheless, the grouch awaited.

Fortunately, we finally made it back to Radiation Springs by way of Squib's dad's house, Attrition and Mystery's (to drop off phone #1), a Citgo station (to peel the sheetrock off the underside of the car that we "had" to run over, the Jack-in-the-Box in Willis (cause I had consumed a Route 44 DP earlier), and the church for sheet music.

All-in-all.....seven hour round trip......geesh.
Scat

There's Hope In Them Thar Hills!

Attrition and I have been slaving together all week to resurrect an ailing workstation and network/VPN, etc. Why it has taken two people an entire week perhaps exceeds the scope of this blog...more likely it exceeds the patience of this blogger. So, we finished our "work" at about 7pm last night and decided to proceed into Radiator Springs for a burger. We went to "The Hop." Don't knock it, it's all we've got in the way of fast food and cherry Dr. Peppers (which is why we were there). And, lo and behold, a discovery was made!!!!! In the last few weeks, the Hop has decided to start making you-know-what.....

.....YES! PIZZA!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just couldn't resist. So, I got a small super cheese pizza and it was awesome....awesome for dinner an awesome again for brunch!!!!!

They don't really do it quickly and definitely not for delivery, but if you're having a craving, they're there to satisfy!

So, Merriweather, I guess if you're still looking for a retirement business you still have it as an option, but you'll have to compete, put them out of business, and or deliver.....I still think you'd have a niche here and, of course, my shameless free advertising.

Pizza'd Up!

Scat

Sometimes Small Towns Are Just Small

I have really been relishing small-town life for the past two years. Having moved around from place to place since, well, birth, I have always longed for a place to call home. I didn’t arrive here by choice, but by circumstance. However, I had always felt at home here. Papa and Baba have had a house here on the lake since I was three and I have always come here for summers and holidays. Many of the people here now are the still the same and I have grown up with their children and now our children play together. I don’t have any other place that I would call my hometown. The longest I lived anywhere was for six years in another small town in Oklahoma (near Tulsa), but I had no idea what small really meant then.

According to the little green sign you pass when you enter Radiator Springs(obviously not the real name, but seriously what Squib calls it...for realz) we have now topped out at 693 people. Where are all those people? I surely don’t know. It doesn’t even take five minutes to drive to the next “town” and I’m not so sure that Radiator Springs and the surrounding “towns” aren’t counting some of the same people twice….

The nice thing about living here is that everything is just flat easier. We’re the county seat, so you can imagine how many people must be in other counties. Taxes are much lower. General living expenses are remarkably lower than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. There’s no pace you have to keep up with. Our grocery store is about the size of a Chili’s restaurant, which does cut down on the creativity of our menu, but we get around that by shopping a little when we’re in the greater Houston area. Library, post office, burger joint, diner, café, little shops on the square that sell resale and trinket odds-n-ends, hardware store, two feed stores, two dollar stores, more churches than we could possibly fill up (some of those folks are going to have to adjusting their belief structure a tad), fair grounds, schools (consolidated with another nearby town), two banks, some realtors, one CPA, a bail bondsman, and that’s about it….well, of course the fledgling Scat Family Trio’s Oil and Gas prospecting business.

 

Medical care is in the “next town over” to quote the natives which is about 25 minutes away and there’s a Wal-mart there which looks like Mecca to me now that I haven’t set foot in a mall since 2007.

 

I misspoke a little about traffic. We do occasionally have traffic-jams, but only during the monthly trail ride and early in the mornings when some of the ranchers are moving their cattle.

Every holiday is celebrated by the entire community and taken very seriously and, yes, everyone does know everything there is to know about everyone else.

 

Except me. I am a bit of an unknown quantity. I have a gift…I can keep my mouth shut.

 

Today, though, I really felt like I was in the middle of the middle of nowhere. Normal day. It was Saturday, but when you live and work as I do, all days are work days when the boys are not around. And with that humongous, looming, taunting, frantic, and inescapable deadline hanging over my head…I just needed a fix.

All I wanted was a pizza.

That’s all.

One pizza.

One little bitty pizza.

Mimi and I were here alone, so I had to stay with her. Therefore, the need for a pizza escalated into the need for a pizza delivery in addition to just a pizza. Simple, right?

NO!

Our little town not only does not have a pizza joint, but is so far away from one that pizza places in adjacent towns will neither deliver nor prepare one for take-out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My first thought was about our youth minister…I mean, really! How do you have a youth ministry alive and kicking without pizza!!! It’s the culinary language of kids and teens alike!

 

Then, I started contemplating how very badly I wanted pizza and just exactly how much I might be willing to pay extra for one pizza to be delivered here. I don’t have to tell you that the amount was rather exorbitant. I was desperate!

 

Fortunately, Attrition made plans to stay over tonight so he could play drums for us tomorrow…first instruction I gave was BRING PIZZA!!!! I WILL PAY!!!!

 

There are many, many things I love about Radiator Springs. I really don’t want to have to leave here permanently. But sometimes…..

Sometimes small towns are just a little too small.

Today, if it hadn’t been for internet access and Attrition, I’d have cracked open like a piñata!

Still in one piece,

Scat

P.S. Happy Birthday to my youngest, Squash Blossom!!!! 4 whole years old today!