The telephone rang at 3:45am. I was dozed, lying there thinking about the two more hours to go before I wanted to get up. It was my Microsoft customer service. I told him the time; he apologized and hung up. I immediately regretted not getting up and dealing with the problem. He said he would call back later in the morning. I got up at 4, leashed Elsa, and headed out to get my 6,000-step morning walk done so I wouldn't be on the road when he called. I was prepared to walk out of the morning yoga class when he called. Solving the Zoom problem was my top priority.
I needed to download iCloud to the tablet so I could send recordings to other Internet sites. Microsoft store asked for Mike's email password. Sadly, he didn't make telling me his passwords on his death bed a priority. Someone I spoke to said Microsoft Customer support could reset that password. Not being able to get iCloud on the tablet has been a significant frustration.
I have iCloud on my Apple Computer; I can get Zoom on my apple computer, but it does not have a touch screen, so I can't use the whiteboard. The tablet has a touch screen in Zoom, but I didn't have the iCloud option, so I can't make the recordings available to others. Geez, Louise.
My computer support person helped me download the iCloud to the tablet. However, I don't think he realized he had been successful. He directed me to go to Microsoft Store. It asked for Mike's email password. The wall. The agent asked me for Mike's email: mross@pcj.edu. He searched for it and said it didn't exist. Huh? I'm sure the seminary that issued Mike that email address has deleted his account. They knew he was dead, and there was a good chance he would not use it again.
The agent told me that my only option was to have the computer hard drive stripped and start afresh. I caught a glimpse of this picture of Mike he took by accident one day as he was focused on the computer screen. I'm sure he didn't mean to. There's interest in his eyes and a softness to his face. His hair is also a total mess. It's a great shot. I started to cry at the thought of losing it and maybe other stuff he had on the tablet. Mind you, I doubt there is much. I don't think he used it for word files. He used it for the NY Times crossword puzzle and Zooming with a spiritual director from the mainland.
After I got off the phone with Microsoft customer service, I signed into Zoom on the tablet. Ah, iCloud was available. It worked. I don't have to strip Mike's tablet with his wonderful picture, his name, and my name as the password.
Scott went shopping for the materials he needed at Lowe's today. He spoke to Tom from Acoustical Surfaces. Tom was a bubbe. He was willing to give Scott advice even though we weren't buying anything from his company. Of course, they did make money off of me- the restocking fee.
Scott said Tom said that the rubber acoustic under layering was not damaged by the screws. Huh? I called Mike from the QT company, the manufacturer. Oh, boy. I didn't ask the right questions. No, the material has not been degraded by having screws driven through it. The holes just close up when the screws are removed. The material's effectiveness is compromised with screws and staples driven through it because they transfer the sound from floor to floor. I called Floor Coverings Hawaii immediately to cancel my order. Angela told me that my order was already on the boat coming from Honolulu. I will have to pay a reshelving fee- and the shipping fee. It's an expensive mistake.
Tom advised Scott about the best way to insulate the space between the floor and the ceiling from above. Scott had left some space. It may not make a lot of difference, but I will know that we have done everything we can.
Yvette put out an APB on Facebook, looking for someone to help me with my computer problems. Lo and behold, someone who works at Island Health Care with her responded. Hawaii is an amazing place. We don't all know each other, but it is still small enough that someone I know knows someone I just ran into. And it is a place of kindness and consideration. So lucky to be living in Hawaii!!! That's the bumper sticker, but it's hard not to say it for real after living here for a while- if you belong.
There is a story that the island, meaning the rock we stand on, not the people, chooses who gets to stay. If you don't belong, life is made unpleasant. If you do belong, the island does what it can to hang on to you. Mike and I felt the island saying, "What the hell took you so long," when we arrived. Things went so well for us.
I can't imagine a better place to be now that I've lost Mike. Before it was, everything would be all right because no matter what, we would be together. Well, guess that doesn't work anymore. Here I have so much that makes life more bearable – even with this pandemic and the untenable political situation.
I've been complaining about how stressed I feel. My tolerance for not getting what I want is lower. It shows up with the kids I work with. I don't mean I yell, but I'm not as internally calm. Their difficulties are getting on my nerves. I miss Mike beyond words. I miss his hugs that soothed me. I could curl up there and feel all was right with the world. My stress would dissolve. I feel unnerved as I do when I am overtired or painfully hungry. Frazzled. At the end of the day, I finally cried. Crying doesn't come easily to me. I wish I could do more. My body needs the release. Grief is a bitch. It is so exhausting.
I had two appointments during the day. One was with Et. I wanted to record it but couldn't get back to record option once I had put up the whiteboard. I wanted to do the whiteboard first, so my face was just in a little square on the side of the screen instead of filling it. I hate the way I look. I don't know if I ever looked at pictures taken at the time and saw something I liked. Of course, I look at the same pictures ten years later and think," Gee, I wasn't that bad looking." I can imagine people, particularly women, chuckling in recognition as they read the above words.
Et., D's sister, was even more enthusiastic about the impact of our work. We've only done five sessions now, working on a total of eleven words; we worked on three the other day. The first session was just the taking-the-words-apart activity. In the second session, I introduced how to decode unfamiliar words.
Today, some of her problems showed up. After we analyzed one word, she asked to read a passage from a book. I discovered two issues. She intrudes sounds: today, she read popped as plopped and made a similar error with another word. I recommended that she name all the letters in a sentence without working on reading the words. This is again a way of heightening awareness of what is.
She told me she had a problem because she read in a monotone. Well yeah, she doesn't stop at periods. I read a few sentences to her, modeling what I sounded like when I did that. She was able to read it correctly when she read out loud with me.
I also had an appointment with adolescent El later in the afternoon. He gets straight As; his problem was creeping depression. I did five 15-minute sessions with him, and his mood turned around. (Will this last forever? I don't know. Is he good for now? Yes.) I have persuaded him to continue working with me.
This session led to his feeling of loneliness. This boy was born to two very young people who were not together (a one-night stand at a drunken party) and were not ready to be parents. While his dad is no longer in the picture, his paternal grandfather and his mother are both committed adults at this point in his life.
The work I do with him goes very quickly. Of course, I have known him since he was six, and I helped him learn to read, as I have his sister and his younger brother. I am a trusted member of that family at a distance. I assume my long-term role in his life has made my work with him easier.
Yvette's friend D. from Hawaii Heart Care came over around 5pm to help me with my computer problems. I had solved a major one, but I still couldn't play the videos I had recorded. They came through to my email address, but I couldn't download them. D. said, "Forget yahoo; use Gmail." I sent the Zoom emails with the videos over to my Gmail address. He was right. I could download them from that site. D. also solved several other problems I had. First, I could not figure out how to get the virtual keyboard up on Mike's tablet. Now, that was easy.
The second problem was more serious. It seems that my Quiet Queen playlists have been emptied. My Microsoft customer service guy noticed that. I was shocked. I had no idea. I certainly hadn't emptied them. How did it get that way? Ah, August reformatted the files so they could be posted on Bandcamp. What a nightmare. D. was able to do something to send the files for two of the stories to others to use. No one has complained to me. Of course, no one knew what they were supposed to look like.
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Musings:
I am for democracy. I'm in agreement with the old saw, "Democracy is a lousy political system, but it's the best we got." Can we get a crazy at the helm? Absolutely. Apparently, the ancient Greeks who formulated the idea of democracy realized that flaw. A demagogue could gain power.
The alternatives are monarchies and oligarchies. As far as I can see, that doesn't guarantee protection from a rogue ruler who only advocates from a limited perspective instead of being concerned about all the people in the realm.
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." That line stands on its own. We always have to be on the alert for elites.
As an advocate for democracy, I support the idea of multiple sources of power that pull in different directions, where everyone can have a voice. In the push and pull, we wind up with the best that is possible at that time. If we get a dictatorship, a single point of view can dominate.
I don't agree with most of Trump's political positions. While I didn't vote for him, I was interested to see what he would accomplish. 'Good 'changes come from surprising sources. There's always the law of unintended consequences. Who knows what will happen?
As I see it, the problem comes when opposing voices are no longer respected, whether that dismissal comes from the right or the left. Contempt! Oh, boy, it's not just deadly for marriages.
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