I woke up in the middle of the night, wide awake. I wasn't agitated, at least not at first. But since I was up, why not get upset about something. The first thing that came to mind was my interaction with the Microsoft support company I had on Friday.
I know their support person told me that he told me I needed a new operating system and a subscription to the Professional Word suite. I realized he told me that the operating system's purchase was a once-only transaction in the middle of the night. I also remember him saying that any package that came with a lifetime guarantee was good for the computer's lifetime, not the person who owned it. (I had asked for clarification concerning my computer.)
I came to realize that the operating system on Mike's tablet must still be good. I had no need to purchase a new one. If that purchase was good for the life of the machine and not the person's life, it was not dependent on Mike's being alive. Whatever he owned became mine at the moment of his death.
I was thrashing around in the bed, thinking about this. I felt helpless. I also was angry with myself for not catching the inconsistency before I made a payment. I have an excuse; I am almost 80. What is David's excuse? I suspect there is an element of innocence. He is used to people calling who bought their computer from a previous owner. Then the whole hard drive has to be stripped and reinstalled. My situation is different.
I called Dorothy as I started my morning walk. I call her each morning these days. So far, we're not running out of things to talk about, even though our conversations run close to an hour. She tells me about her great cat, James. Despite her having to do many uncomfortable things to him for medical reasons, he has never clawed her. He sits in her lap and purrs. He curls up against her back at night as she sleeps. She is one lucky lady.
Elsa is not an affectionate dog. Yes, she loves to be stroked, especially belly rubs. She can keep me going all day, throwing balls. But she is not an affectionate dog. She sees me as someone who can give what she wants. She does not see me as a companion.
Shortly after we hung up, the phone rang, and it was Alex from the Microsoft support company. I called and threatened to cancel my credit card payment. I told him about the problem. His record of what had been done was different from what David, the man I spoke to, told me. David told me that I was paying for a new operating system and a three-year subscription for the Professional word suite. Alex, the man who called me this morning, told me that I had purchased the virus system and the professional word suite but not the operating system. Hmmm!
I also realized that if Mike bought a three-year contract for Word in 2018, it was still valid, at least until January. Alex asked me not to cancel the payment; he would have David call me tomorrow. We made an appointment for David to call me between 9-10 am tomorrow. Good.
Two priority mail packages were delivered today. Yep, today, Sunday in the Labor Day weekend. One was for Josh, the other for me. Mine contained the clips I ordered from Acoustical Solutions, had sent to Dorothy in NJ for $33, which she forwarded to me for about $22. If it had been sent directly, it would have cost something like $150. Shipping to Hawaii costs a fortune.
That sense of being alone in an empty house hit me on and off throughout the day. Can you imagine, it has taken one year and six months, almost to the day, to feel that Mike is gone from my life; I am actually here without him. Before last night, he was always just in the other room. He was still present somehow. I can't explain to anyone who hasn't experienced that type of presence. I don't know if I miss him more or if I feel the aloneness more. It's a heavy silence.
I finally called Amazon to check on the charges I couldn't locate in my Amazon orders file. I got a lovely woman who had difficulty understanding English. What a job to have when you listen to people given a list of letters and numbers. She needed the reference numbers for each item to check what it was. She and I worked out a system that worked for us. We built up speed.
The result: there were no charges in my account resulting from someone using my card. However, there were two cases of charges that had been recorded twice. The Amazon lady said that had been the fault of the bank. Amazon sends out the charge to the bank immediately. That's called an authorization charge. I think they're checking to see if it's a valid account. The second one is the billing charge, which goes out when the item is sent. Both the authorization charge and the billing charge were on the bill for two items. Well, at least I know that no one stole my credit card number. We were on for at least half an hour. I was tired afterward and wanted a nap.
Crista, the owner of the Bikram studio, contacted me to ask how I was. She reported that each class had a steady nine students. It sounded like the studio was doing okay. I was glad to hear that.
I also got a text from an old tutoring student asking me how I was doing. I started working with her when she was in fourth grade. She is well into her teens now. I also have been thinking of her. I contacted her mother the other day for the name of an online school she had sent her children to that seemed to be doing a good job.
I called one woman I know through friends, who has five children. The older two are doing fine. Her sixteen-year-old son is all in honors classes. A daughter in seventh grade is doing fine too. Her younger son, who is now in second grade, had difficulty with reading in first grade. Currently, he is reading well. While his word recognition is good, I find myself wondering about his comprehension. The mother said the big problem is figuring out how to navigate the web. If this mother is confused, I hate to think how many other parents must be feeling. Many are just giving up.
I found the metal squeegee Mike gave me as his last Christmas present, along with the wrong shape and color toilet seat he gave me at the same time. I thought one of my house guests had taken it. I hadn't been able to find it for love or money. What is still missing is the Fugoo speaker he gave me a few years ago. The missing squeegee never made much sense. While I miss the speaker, I am happy to have the squeegee back. Anything that connects me to him.
I took a short nap. I got up to do my before-dinner walk. As I looked out over the lanai toward the ocean, it was raining in our backyard. When I went to the bedroom, it didn't look like it had rained there. I stepped outside. Where I stood, it was dry as a bone. A few feet away, I could see the rain coming down.
Rain is weird that way. When Mike and I were living in Columbus, we had a similar experience. We had been shopping. As we left the store, the sky opened and dumped an absolute downpour. The kind of rain that leaves you soaked immediately.
Mike was concerned because he had left a library book open on a chaise lounge in the backyard. It had to be ruined. As we drove up our street, we could see where the rain had tapered off and stopped. Mike and I ran to the backyard to check. The rain had stopped a few feet from the chaise. The book was bone dry.
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Musings:
Most people identify with their conscious minds: I am what I think I am. They believe the conscious mind should be in complete control of all our thinking. When thoughts come up that they think inappropriate, they think those should just be banished by the conscious mind. Done!
Research shows that our conscious mind plays a minimal role in our daily actions. Our muscles are already firing up, reaching for that package of frozen greens beans before our prefrontal lobes show any activity.
Some people hear that and think science is saying we have no free will. The conscious mind has a role in our decision-making, just not the one we think it does. Here's an analogy. The conscious mind is to our unconscious mind, as our rectal muscles are to our digestive tract. I don't know the exact spatial proportions of either, but I do know that the conscious mind is only a small portion of the brain, and the rectal muscles are only a small portion of the digestive system.
Their functions are comparable too. They observe internally driven actions and give the okay or veto them. As is the case with the digestive tract, sometimes, the need to act overwhelms the sphincter muscles of our minds or our digestive tracts. In both cases, the development of the sphincter muscle, both the digestive tract and the mind, takes time to develop.
The power of the conscious mind takes longer to develop than the rectal muscles. The rectal muscles are working pretty well by the age of two or three. The control of the conscious mind isn't fully developed until we are around twenty-five. That's why the law is applied differently to children than to adults.
The role of the conscious mind role is the same as the rectal muscles. They say "go" or "stop."
Some believe all good decisions come from the conscious mind, and all bad ones come from the unconscious mind. The decision to reach for the green beans is not good or bad. The unconscious mind is a huge, powerful engine. The conscious mind is puny in comparison. If we relied on it to make all our decisions, we would be exhausted within half an hour after rising.
I have met people who argue that all their life decisions are made rationally. They have a weak understanding of how the human psyche.
This is an issue for me because I will be working with a young child who is being asked to do work now that he did last year. I pictured myself asking him why he didn't like the work. I can see him saying, "It's stupid!" Then his mother arguing with him. She has a very different understanding of the human psyche than I do. I would want to explore why he thinks it's stupid. How does it make him feel to be asked to do work that he thinks is stupid? I would want to enrich his understanding of himself and my understanding of him. Sometimes people come up with answers that surprise both themselves and me.
The difference is in how I envision the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. I see a need to negotiate between them. I guess I would say that each of them holds a truth. When they work together in harmony, as long as they stay in an ethical framework, they can develop the best solutions.
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