THE MOREL OF THE STORY

For the past several weeks I have been doing a Mushroom study, because it has been so damn HUMID down here, and what else can one do outside except take photos of things that grow in humidity. Like mushrooms. While being chewn alive by the thousands of miniature vampires (i.e. mosquitos) that inhabit the same woodland area. I consider it worth the numerous blood suckings that took place upon my person to get these incredible photos. Like Alice, I drank the liquid that made me shrink and walk amongst them. I had no idea of the diversity of the shroom population until I ventured forth. Some of them are rather sexual in appearance (many, in fact). I could imagine Georgia O'Keefe painting the insides of several. Can't tell you a thing about them, the names nor whether they're poisonous or benign. All I know is that they are incredibly beautiful. And have a very short life. Because like Dracula, once that sunlight comes out and dries the air, they wither. I call them forest flowers. (And all praise to Canon for their brilliant little miracle of a camera the 610A Powershot.)

INTERNET FUN AND GAMES

July 23, 2008
INTERNET FUN AND GAMES


Face it, the home computer/ethernet tech world is too complicated for us. A typewriter, file cabinet, plain old push button phone (remember those?) gives one far less headaches. So do paper, envelopes and stamps - in my book.

I’ve been having a great deal of difficulty getting on the internet lately and I’ve been on the phone a LOT with Bombay. First it was with the Dell people, now with the Windstream folk. One great thing about the latter is that they speak English VERY WELL. Unlike the former. And the Streamers really listen to you. Unlike the Dellies.

So I can’t get connected and I call the Streamers. I already know how to do a diagnostic test on their modem (the BLACK BOX). You don’t need an internet connection to do so. As long as you can bring up the browser window you can put in their ISP address. It takes you to their - I don’t know what it’s called...router page? It has a System Summary. There are two main Connection Summaries. They should be green. RED mean BAD. So if you see BADNESS you click on Tools and then Reboot. And you have to put in the code and then your modem lights up like a Christmas Tree with pretty flashing lights. You are re-setting the modem to factory defaults. (This is known as a soft re-set.) Why they would become un-set is not a question I’ve asked. (Of course there’s also a hard reset with a sophisticated pointed implement [pen tip] poked into the little hole in the rear. No comments please.)

After you’ve done that you click on Diagnostics and put in the appropriate Connection to Test parameters and it gives you the results. There’s the Connections in the Home; Connections at the Carrier; Internet Service Provider; and Internet Connectivity. Within those sections are a minimum of two and a maximum of four results. You want to see them PASS in pretty green. You don’t want to see the red (BAD) FAIL.

Since I would rather NOT have to talk to Bombay on a regular basis, I have written all these instructions down so I can do them myself. But it doesn’t really matter. There’s always something new wrong, or something new to learn to do.

So last week I can’t get connected and I run the tests and it says FAIL and I call. And it turns out that my Firewall (Zone Alarm) was suddenly blocking the internet . Why? Because they put in a new update, but the rest of the tech world hadn’t been informed and the update was not compatible with something else - Microsoft? I think. I’m told that a patch will be due out shortly. Swell. Meanwhile I’ve now learned if my service is down to first shut down my firewall, then my virus sweep and finally my spy protection. Which of course leaves me TOTALLY VULNERABLE TO ALL THE BAD PEOPLE OUT THERE.

That problem eventually gets solved. I think. Then once again I can’t get on the Net. I’m getting to know these guys real well by now. They use fake American names because they think we’re all too stupid to be able to understand, let alone pronounce their real names. I’ve talked to Kevin and George and Thomas. Whose real names were probably something like Kailash and Gobardhan and Jhareshwar. (The reason I know they’re made up names is because I asked and actually got an honest answer). Now before I call I first disengage all protective programs. If that doesn’t work I do a diagnostic test. One guy actually told me I knew more than he did! Fortunately most of them seem to believe and trust me when I say I’ve already done the test and give them the results. Perhaps they have notes on my file that say ATD (meaning this one Ain’t Too Dumb)

Well then I was told to go to Start and select Run and type in “cmd” and then ping Google. (I guess if you ping a known site and IT comes up, things should be working fine.) If this all makes absolutely no sense to you - WHY SHOULD IT? That’s my point. Why do we have to know all this STUFF??? It’s too complicated!

BUT, I now know it. And so I try to troubleshoot my own internet connection. Yeah. Everything starts to work fine again. Then it’s down. I run the test. FAIL. I call Bombay. I get a PASS. Great. Then it’s down again. Then it up. I feel like a boxer in a ring and I’m getting trounced. I begin to think I’m losing my mind. What is happening here? When I CAN get on it’s like molasses. So they tell me to do a speed check. Great. I learn a new bit. Got my very own internet Radar Gun, oh boy! Radar Gun says the speed is great. REALLY????? I put in one trouble ticket, then when they fix it, they close the ticket, only to have me open another one.

Meanwhile this is costing me HOURS AND HOURS of my time. And for what? So I can get some sappy “You’re my friend for life and if you don’t pass this on to 150 people in the next 45 minutes you’ll DIE!” forward???!!!! Or those reeeeeeaaallly cute Youtube rocking the puppy to sleep videos. AAAAaaaargh!

Finally we get a call from a local God bless America Southern drawling Streamer. He says “they’ve” been having some kind of trouble between Charlotte and Arkansas. He wishes he could get his hands on it to fix it, but it ain’t in his territory. But he THINKS it’s fixed now.

And you wonder why I’m afraid to leave my computer illiterate husband home alone with the computer when I go on a trip? He can’t even grasp the concept of a document being on the screen and still inside the computer at the same time, let alone what software vs hardware means. The fact that he can search for houses for sale on the Internet and compose and send a missives is a miracle.

These machines are miracles. When they work. But when they don’t.......

A Small Miracle & a New Friend

A couple of nights ago I was in my office and I heard a squawking. How odd, I thought. What creature would be squawking at 11 pm?

I opened the door to find Harlie, our black and white killer, under my office window and I figured I'd then find the squawker, which I assumed was a mouse. Wrong. It was a bird. Oh swell. Don't know what kind. Not a baby, I think, though small, maybe a Sparrow? Wren? But it had no tail feathers at all. Which could mean that they were all plucked off by the Killer. (What is it with me and birds this year? Is there a Chinese Year of the Bird?)

It was standing upright when I picked it up. It got out of my hand, briefly, Harlie went after it, I grabbed it again and brought it inside to examine. It lay in the cupped palm of my hand on it's back. It's chest was heaving and there was what looked like a pretty good hole right in the middle of it. Swell. Just swell. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a cat with it's prey, they usually give it one nice chomp. Not enough to kill it outright, just enough to slow it down so that it can be "played with." God. Well, I thought, I'll just sit here with it, and hold it tenderly 'til it breathes it's last. I really didn't think its "last" would take too long. The breathing got shallower and shallower, the chest no longer heaving in spasming gulps of air. I've held wee creatures in my hand that were dying before. If you own cats, it's bound to happen. And always it's heart wrenching. The little eyes were closed, it's little feet motionless. But it continued to breathe.



Sometimes, when I'm emotionally strong enough, and I think the animal is going to experience a long, slow, painful death, I will put it out of it's misery myself. Don't ask the various means I've used, they're all hideous but mercifully quick. But I haven't been too chipper of late and was not up to that task on this night. Rand suggested putting the creature in Pam's head, and I thought what better place to put it then in the little nest that had recently been vacated by a family of baby birds (see blog below). I considered taking a picture of it when it was in my palm, but it was all too depressing and I considered it rather dishonorable to do such a thing to the poor creature. That much of a ghoul I am not.

I got the step ladder out and climbed up to peer inside Pam's head, and the nest had a HUGE spider web in it. One of those really messy funnel webs made by one of those really LARGE funnel spiders? - wolf spiders I think they are. Husband handed me a stick and I gathered up the web like a wand of cotton candy and then gently laid the bird in the nest. It opened it's eyes and looked at me. Did it understand I was trying to be kind?

I prayed for the little creature but didn't hold out much hope. Had visions of climbing the ladder the next morning and finding it all limp necked, probably with some hideous eight-legged monster gnawing on the hole in it's middle. Very depressed I went to bed.

The next morning came and I couldn't face the consequences, because the images I had conjured in my brain were just to awful to confront first thing. So I asked Rand to look at the remains. He stepped up on the ladder and looked inside the head. Said he couldn't see it very well, to please get him the flashlight. I did so. He said he still couldn't see it. WHAT?!!! I practically thew him off the ladder and bound up there. Peered in and... NOTHING. Blessedly NOTHING was there! Just the empty nest. I cannot tell you how grateful I was. How it could have survived the night, I don't know. It was surely a little miracle.

Now my only fear is that I'll find it somewhere nearby on the ground under a bush. That maybe it had managed to fly just a bit but landed under my Mums or something. And maybe Harlie will catch it again. But then maybe God wanted this little fellow to live for a while longer yet.

One must keep the faith, eh?

******************************************************************

On another note: another visitor stopped by the other day.

More Gifts

July 1, 2008 More Gifts


The birds were squawking outside the front porch. Why? Well, the cats were around. Or one cat in particular - our black and white, named Harlie (short for Harlequin.)
She’s a killer. Skinny as a rail - she looks half starved (though gets as much to eat as she wishes), and is faster than a speeding bullet. Has brought down many a bird, and THAT takes skill.

Something about this particular bird squawking caught my attention. It seemed more urgent than normal. Very insistent. Then my mind latched onto a happy possibility. A nest full of babies in my sister’s head.

This needs a brief explanation. My half sister, Pam, was a sculptress. Not as a professional, she didn’t try to make a living at it, though I think she could have. But she was married to an artist and just enjoyed drawing and sculpting. Constantly took classes in both. (We shared the same father, but she was 40 years? older than I. Another story - another time.) Anyway, she did a sculpture of herself which had hung on a tree outside their kitchen for many a year. And when she passed away, I asked to have it and was granted the privilege. It currently sits against our front porch wall. The top of the head is hollowed out. Last year there was a nest in it and so I was hoping that that might be the case again this year. (I had cleaned it all out at the end of last season.)


So I get the step ladder and climb up and look inside the top of the head. And sure enough there are four wee baby birds. They looked like they had just hatched. Have never seen babies this small.

I got to watch the growth process for two weeks before leaving on a trip North. Harlie practically lay up-side-down under the head with her mouth open just waiting for that first flight and the potential of a fluttering failure.

I figured they’d be gone by the time I got back. And they were. But these are the shots I managed to capture beforehand.

New Chiropractor

July 21, 2008

I’ve never been Rolfed. But I understand it’s quite unpleasant. Something about digging deeply into tissue. Something Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, would dole out as a pleasant past time treat. “You Vill Tell Me Ewvreting I vant to know!”

No, that never appealed to my idea of alleviating pain. But currently I’m being Grastonated. Not merely satisfied with using one’s hands to do a deep massage, some skier who'd hurt himself, named David Graston, came up with state of the art stainless steel torture devices. The object is to break down scar tissue - which is bad for you because it inhibits movement and causes pain. But nothing like the pain of going through this process. Imaging someone taking the backside of a strong steel hunting knife - the EDGE, not the flat part - and rubbing it fast and as hard as they can at a 45 degree angle over various portions of your body. Which are already sore, because that's why you're going to get treated, right? Sound like fun to YOU?

The chiropractor, a sweetheart of a guy named Daniel Becker (828) 817-5524 (if you live in NC), told me that the pain level should be kept at 7 or under. Now I can take a lot of pain. We women have much higher pain thresholds then you men (generally speaking). After all, you faint when a needle goes in your arm. We open our pelvises and human beings pop out. But pain like this I have never experienced. Then again, I’ve never given birth, but I think I might prefer it.

He told me I might bruise from his work. That when tissue has been in a trauma state for a long while, capillaries pool around it. (I also have heard blood tend to pool around certain areas of a dead body - but what of that.) And when you press on this scar tissue those pooled capillaries tend to come to the surface. Well, yeaaaaah. If you press hard enough on your skin tissue, it’s gonna bruise. I looked like I should go to the battered woman shelter down the block when I got out of there. Thank goodness he wasn’t working on my face. I can imagine attempting to audition looking like my husband clobbered me with a baseball bat.

Buy hey, this guy was recommended (as was this technique) by two people I know. I’d call them “friends,” but now I’m beginning to question that. And they were helped by him. So it must work. Right?

He wants to see me two days later. TWO DAYS LATER? Oooookay. I am so sore when I walk into his office that I tell him he is not laying hands on those bruised areas. Oh he has no intention of doing that. Today he’s going to do manipulations. Ah. Good. I’ve had that done before. Doesn’t hurt at all. YES IT DOES. I’m not sure what he did to my neck, but it felt fine before I went in. Maybe after the Ibuprofen kicks in I’ll be able to sleep tonight. He took the shoulder that was bothering me (with the bruises now all over it) and manipulated my arm in ways that only a contortionist should know.
Let’s see if we can slowly rip it out of it’s socket! Ilsa, She Wolf, has NOTHING on this guy. This, apparently is known as Active Release.

He finally finishes and I’m not sure where my body went. I try to grin. It’s a bit lopsided. “Well, I guess you’ll want to see me again next week,” I say. “Friday,” he replies. “THIS FRIDAY???” “Yes.” Shouldn’t there be some healing time here? The bruises probably won’t even be gone by then. “It’s better to do it all up front. Otherwise it’s maintenance, and this is not maintenance.” He’s a sadist. Right? Gotta be. I must be mad, but I say okay. Well, this is as it should be. He’s the sadist, and I’m the masochist. Can’t have one without the other.

I ask him if I can play tennis after, assuming that I can’t. I mean every other chiropractor that has ever worked on me has told me to take it easy for the rest of the day. Not Herr Mengele. “Yes, go, it’s good to keep working muscles and tendons.” I almost cried.

Am SO looking forward to my next visit. What new and wonderful torture will he have in store? Read it all in the next chapter!

Chapter II

As you might imagine I was not particularly looking forward to my third visit. What new torture was going to be perpetrated by Dr. Mengele this day? I figured there wasn’t much left that could be considered new. WRONG!

He was running a bit behind by a fellow masochist and so told me to lie on what I call the Tsunami. Looks like one of those typical chiropractic manipulation beds where they do their adjustments. (Actually called an Intersegmental Traction Table



He told me to lie on my back and then kindly put a pillow under my head. Most people who put a pillow under your head do so in attempt to make you feel better. Not Dr. Mengele. Showed me where the adjustment dial was, which in order to reach I had to bend my arm out of it’s socket. “This will open the joints of your spine,” said he gleefully. Oh? Uh huh! Can’t wait! “Each time you press this switch up, it will increase the wave. (not his term). If you want to decrease it (why on earth WOULD you I could hear him thinking) press the switch down. If you start to hear a grinding noise you know it’s at it’s upper limit.” Or I am, I thought. And he’s gone.

OK. Imagine a ball, the size of a big man’s fist, rolling under your spine from your lower back to your neck. A hard ball. A very HARD ball. And each time you press the up button the ball gets bigger and thrusts your spine in more of a convex wave. I began to feel like I was on my back in a small dingy in a Force 7 Gale with a cannon ball running under my back. I thought, well, gee, then if this opens my spine I guess he won’t need to do any more adjustments. WRONG.

At this point I don’t remember the order to the torture. But I still got to kneel on the “beheading chair” in the guillotine position. That’s the only way to describe it. It might be considered a praying position but your butt’s sticking out too much for that. At least I don’t tend to pray with my butt sticking out, although your back is kept in a flat position. At least I think it was flat, before he mashed it into submission.

I kept trying to relax, but after my previous visit my neck was none too happy and an actor’s sense memory is very keen. So I was awaiting the disintegration of every vertabra in my back and that, yeah, kinda tensed me up. Snap Crackle Pop rice crispies!

I made the mistake of telling him my elbow was hurting. Stupid. I now have a new bruise going the entire length of the underside of my arm (that’s the soft part) to my elbow. I think that occurred AFTER he tried to manipulate my ulnar by bending my elbow BACKWARD. Great if one were double jointed. Perhaps now I shall be?



I didn’t really think he’d re-work any of the areas he’d already Grastonated because they were still bruised. HA. WRONG. The thing that really puzzles me is that I LET him???!!!!! Obviously I have a deep need for abuse somewhere in my psyche. I must feel guilty about having a happy childhood.

So now I’m sitting on the “bednch” (well it’s not really a bed, seems more like a bench don’t it) and he’s digging into my right ankle and it’s HURTING LIKE HELL. And I’m trying to distract myself. So I start singing. LOUDLY. I think he was rather surprised. His eyes looked rather bright. Was that surprise or glee? I’m sure mine were too. Bright with pain.

But there was more fun to come. He puts me on a wobble board. No, not one of those manual disks with a ball underneath that YOU can control. Are you kidding. That’s child’s play to this guy. No, this is an electronic cutie known as the I Joy Board . I’m telling you, all these devices were thought up by people who are into whips, chains and blindfolds. At least they had the decency not to name it the I Enjoy Board.

He asks me if I have a sense of balance. Stupidly I say yes. (I think I’m just beginning to learn that you want to lie to this guy whenever possible.) How can I even begin to describe this machine. Thank God I did have a sense of balance, is all I can say, else I’d be on my ass on the floor and he’d be manipulating THAT next. It’s your basic two foot long teeter totter that sits eight inches off the floor. You know, you put your feet hip distant apart and lean right and left and.... Only in this case you don’t do anything. Except hang on for dear life. He hands me the remote (not dissimilar to a car lock remote) and says, “This button controls the wobble, and this one is the emergency shut of. Make sure you point it down toward the ground if you want to shut it off.” Oh. Ok.

Yowza and we’re OFF! Holy Cow. Give me a hula hoop and I wouldn’t have had any trouble keeping it up on my hips. I mean I’m being WOBBLED. Well, big deal, you might say. Yeah, well, Dr. Mengele has only just begun. WHILE I’m being wobbled, he’s got his happy stainless steel hunting knife and he’s rubbing it as hard as he can on my ankle - I think it was. At this point all I remember is pain. AND then he asks me to do slow squats DURING the process. “If I want.” IF I WANT???? I’m not kidding here. Honest to God. I wonder if he’s as demanding on the octagenerians? I don’t even what to imagine what he does to folks thirty years of age and younger.

Well of course, being the patsy masochist I am, I do nice slow squats while he's scraping on my wobbling ankle tissue with all his might. I’m not sure I actually fully grasp the concept here, but I think it has to do with the wobble board and the squats making your muscles work in certain ways that he can only torture with his device that couldn’t be reached else.

Then he proceeded to work on certain of the areas that he’d previously worked on that were already bruised. I could easily now walk into the local battered women’s shelter and have my husband arrested should I so desire.

I hope I don’t have an audition soon. Because I’d have to wear pants and a long sleeved shirt. Really.

I asked him, (because he’d made the comment when I’d told him I’d had physical therapy elsewhere and they’d used sonar on me and it had hurt like Hell....actually burned, and he'd said if it were done properly it shouldn’t hurt) I asked what I thought was a very logical question given his previous response: "Why should one turn black and blue and suffer enormously during your technique then? Hmmm?

That was when he handed me the butcher’s knife and said, “Here, feel for yourself. The instrument will tell you. Scrape along here.” And he placed it against the lower part of my wrist. And I scraped. Then he moved it up eight inches to my forearm and said, “Now do it here.” And I did. “Do you feel the grittiness?” Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I did. And he said, and proved it by rubbing against the lower part, “if the tissue is well, it will not bruise. It is only when there’s scarring underneath that you’ll find the capillaries coming up.”

I asked him if HE knew what this all felt like. He said indeed he did, because when they were learning and practicing the technique they did it on each other. He was not looking forward to the arm pit area. I didn’t want to go there so I didn’t inquire about that. I just pray I don’t have any symptoms that lead me to that area.

The bottom line for all of this crazy agony is....it seems to really work. I may only feel this way at present because the pain of the techniques he’s using oer’pass the pain of my original complaints. Sort of like if you have an ache and you hit yourself in the head with a hammer you no longer feel the original ache. But I don’t think that’s the case. I may have discomfort because of the bruising but the interior parts of my body that were bothering me actually feel better.

Time will tell. And you can be sure I’ll relate it. I expect to end up with the ability to be able to do this. Well, at least pain free. Which one wonders if these contortionists are, eh?

Making a Hanging Decorative Cage in 42 Hard Steps

............
Do not attempt this if you are Bi-Polar, suffer from ADHD, AADD, have quit smoking or drinking recently or are contemplating a divorce.

Tools:

Tape measure
Marking pen
Jig Saw
Extension cord
Drill
Small nails
Hammer
22 small sticks
Patience.

1. Go to the woods and find eight small sticks as straight and equal in 2" circumference as you can.
2 Get a marking pen
3. Get a jig saw.
4. Get a tape measure.
5. Measure the sticks 6" long each
6. Cut them.
7. Go back to the woods to get more sticks because you didn’t put them in a vice while cutting them but simply held them in your left hand off the end of the front porch steps which made them very wobbly and uneven.
8. Cut them again.
9. Starting at one end of the sticks, with the marking pen mark four equidistant points along the length of one side. Don’t put the mark too close to the end or you will split the wood when putting in the nails.
10. Get the hammer
11. Attempt to start a small nail through each mark. When that doesn’t work...
12. Get the extension cord and the electric drill.
13. Remove the bent nails from the pieces of wood
14. Drill small holes through each mark
15. Hammer the nails through so that just a little bit of their tips are showing.
16. Go back to the woods and get 12 longer sticks (same 2" circumference)
17. Cut these to a 12" length
18. Mark the center point of each end
19. With the smaller stick as a base, held so that the nail points are facing up, hammer one long stick at a time onto each nail point. When the longer sticks fall off...
20. Go back and hammer the nails further through the base unit
21. Now try again to hammer the long sticks onto each nail point. Once accomplished,
you should have 4 short pieces with 12 long pieces sticking straight up from them
22. Because you forgot to drill a hole in the center of each end of the smaller sticks, do so now. When the longer sticks fall off,
23. Pound the longer sticks back onto their nail posts
24. Because you forgot to drill a hole through the sides of four of the smaller sticks perpendicular to the hole that holds the longer stick, but rather drilled into the end of all of them, go back to the woods and get four new pieces.
25. Follow steps 2-7
26. Follow Steps 10 & 15
27. Drill a hole perpendicular to the ones at the ends of four of the smaller sticks. Make sure they won’t interfere with a nail going through the other hole.
28. Follow Step 16
29. Follow Step 20
30. Now you are going to make two squares with the eight small pieces, hammering nails through the perpendicular holes.
31. Place the top square onto the vertical bars of the base unit and hammer the nails through the pre-made holes. When it won’t lie flush..
32. Go back to the woods and get another piece of wood to replace the one that is slightly warped.
33. Follow steps 2-7.
34. Follow steps 10, 15 &
35. Go to the medicine chest and gets some drugs to calm yourself down

Later:

You’ve finally completed the bottom part of the cage. Now it’s time to work on the top.

36. Get a pruner
37. Go to the woods and find some vines - watching out for the poison ivy and snakes. Bring back a healthy handful. (You’ve learned by now that you can never have too much of what you need from the woods.)
38. Cut two vines to about an 11" length
39. Wrap one vine around one corner of the top then draw it across the diagonal to the other corner and tie it allowing a good deal of slack. Do the same with the other vine.
40. Go back to the woods and cut another vine because you still didn’t have enough.
41. Make a small 2" loop around the top of the criss-crossed four corner vines.
42. As an added artistic touch, trail some of the left over vine around the cage

Voila!

And because you’re not too stupid - get a thin piece of green wire and wrap it around the vines. Because if the vines holding the cage should break, the 5,000 man hours you’ve spent trying to create the damn thing would all be for nought and then you’d have to hang yourself with the vines.

You might wonder why I took it upon myself to attempt such a task. Well because I had a decorative cage for years that I’d found at a tag sale or thrift shop (don’t remember which). But it eventually rotted and I thought, “Well, I can make one of those! Looks real easy! Just a bunch of sticks from the woods.” HA!

Live and learn I say.