Tales from the Shark Tank

Well, I’ve done it, after talking about it for at least a year. I’ve gone and bought my parents a computer. It will be delivered to their door sometime in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll either go set it up for them or get someone I know to do it. It’s partly a gift to them, but it’s also partly a gift to myself – a gift of communication. I want mom to be able to e-mail her cousin, her friends who moved to Chicago or Israel, her friends from all the varying places we’ve lived. I want dad to be able to communicate with people beyond my mom, difficult when he has a hard time getting out of the house and is too deaf to talk easily on the phone. Mom is forever asking me to look things up; I want her to be able to do it herself. Dad insists he wants to write; I want him to have no more excuses.

And most of all, I want them to be able to e-mail. Mom gets upset when she doesn’t talk to me often enough, especially when she realizes how often my friends communicate with me.  I’ve explained how much of it is via e-mail. E-mail can be sent, or answered, in pieces or when time permits, and that makes it easier.

So I’m hoping that technology will supply a solution for some of the problems of communication and isolation for my parents as it has for so many others. The first step was a computer – and that step is being taken.

It’s not been that I’ve nothing to say here; it’s that I’ve been experiencing technical difficulties. For some unknown reason, my computer and the signal from my in-laws wireless network just don’t like each-the-other. I have a consistently low signal, giving me an allegedly broadband connection seriously less reliable and far slower than the dial-up I have at home. I can tell you, it’s beyond annoying.

Yes, indeed, I am in Indianapolis until Wednesday, the guest of my in-laws along with my son. My husband was here over the weekend, but had to go home for work. I had fun on Sunday, sharing an anniversary brunch with my husband (eighteen years married) and then visiting with my chosen family, but yesterday was long and very tiring. Productive, but still not fun. I lay in wait for my dad’s doctors, and explained to each who came that expecting either of my parents to attend to the care of Dad’s feet was unreasonable and that I live 150 miles away. The chant became “Mother isn’t physically capable and Dad can’t even see his feet, let alone care for them”. Since all they had to do was look at my dad to see the truth of this assertion, I didn’t get argument, I got thoughtful nods. So they kept Dad an extra day to make sure Home Health will be coming in to attend to his feet daily.

On the other hand, my Household has been calling me several times a day (cell phone is wonderful at times such as this) just to see how things are going and make sure I don’t blow a gasket or get too wound over things beyond my control – and sometimes to point out to me what is beyond my control. Thank you; You Know Who You Are.

There are things that are being neglected. I’m working on settling a divorce for some friends of mine, and finding that I don’t have the time or coherence to take it the next step. That’s not good, because this is one where uncertainty creates complications, and delay creates uncertainty. But there are only so many hours in the day, and I’m already devoting 95% of them to other people. So if you’re reading this, I’m sorry, and I’ll get back on track when I get my dad settled a bit better.

And meantime, I need to go get myself and my son clothed and off to my parent’s home. He gets to play with his grandmother, and I get to clean his grandfather’s room. Each to their own strengths, right?

Would someone please convey my heartfelt apologies to the Chinese sage I seem to have so profoundly irritated? Days like today I do not need.

It began with missed trains. Yes, that plural is correct. I missed two trains, neither of them by my own doing. The nearest station for the northern Indiana commuter line into Chicago is usually a half-hour drive away, so I allowed 45 minutes, leaving just after I got my son on the bus. Halfway there, I came upon construction and slowed down to half the usual speed. Ok, it would be tighter, but having allowed half again more time than required, it should be ok.

And then the farm equipment pulled out at a traffic light and raced down the road at a stately 10 mph until it got it got to the next light. As it turned east, a truck with an oversized load joined the procession from the west, moving an equally stately (and prudent) 15 mph for another I don’t know how many miles. The end result was that I pulled into the parking lot just in time to see my train pull away.

So ok. I’m meeting a friend for lunch, and I don’t want to cancel. I tried to catch up. Not possible. I have to stop for traffic lights, it doesn’t, and it has a head start. Finally I had an attack of sense and headed for the Gary station, which is where the mid-day trains that run more than once every 3 hours originate. I got there in time, got my ticket, got my friend’s phone number via Li’s assistance by accessing my e-mail for me (thanks again, Li!), and settled down to wait. Unfortunately, the clock in the waiting room was about 7 minutes slower than the one on the platform, so I got out there to find the train nearly ready to leave. Steps were inaccessible, doors were still open, train wasn’t moving. I waved at the engineer – and he stared me straight in the eye, closed the doors, and waved the train on, leaving me standing there with the next train due an hour later. I was so furious I was crying.

So I called my friend and let her know that by the time the next train would get me there, it would be too late for lunch. We chatted for a bit, and she advised that I make it a day of doing things I wanted anyway. I thought about that, and about the train tickets already in my pocket, and the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum that would be going away as of this weekend, that I’ve been trying to get to see since December, and about the fact that I’d already arranged for my son to ride the bus home with his best friend, so that if traffic delayed me on the way home I needn’t panic about my kid coming home to an empty house. The other little boy’s mom had offered, and I’d taken her up on it. If I went, I wouldn’t have time to both see the exhibit and eat lunch, but hey, I was too mad to eat anyway. I called my husband and asked if he would be wonderful and pick up our little boy and let me go play a little bit, to which he acquiesced with no hesitation. I have a wonderful husband.

And that’s what I did. I waited the hour until the next train, talking to my friend on the cell phone for a while, then telling my husband what had happened. I got a comment card and wrote a complaint, with the ticket agent’s active encouragement. I got into Chicago and found my way to the museum with only a couple of mis-cues on finding the bus. And from that point, the day went better. The exhibit was amazing, though the crowds made it difficult to see properly. I don’t know what the museum could have done differently, but people crowded tightly around each case so that it was almost impossible to see if you weren’t willing to use elbows. (To be fair, no one resorted to such tactics.) I didn’t see much else of the museum, but when I went to catch the bus back to the train station, the driver saw me watching him pull away (with my usual sense of timing this day), and this one pulled over to the curb and let me on, half a block from the proper stop. The train ride home was made interesting by a couple of women who clearly commute that way daily, coming from Crown Point, Indiana to the University of Chicago.

So now I’m home. I’ve seen my exhibit, if not my friend. I’m stiff and rather sore from moving in odd ways to try to see the things I wanted to, but that will go away with a night’s sleep. I still don’t want to eat, but that should self-correct by tomorrow as well.

But I’ve got to figure out a better way to catch trains.

I’ve learned something of myself. I like having a cat sharing lap space with the computer. She purring enough to vibrate her entire small body, watching the antics of the large noisy kitten of the house and trying to track the source of the yummy smell that’s all that remains of my dinner. What a cat wants with coconut-ginger sauce is beyond me, but hey, I’m not a cat. And tonight she serves a quite useful purpose in making me relax. Allergies? A minor consideration, those. Sophia is eminently comfortable and so am I.

My dad is back in hospital for the same infected foot that made him their guest two weeks ago. He’s been on heavy-duty antibiotics the entire time, and in spite of that the thing got worse. So now they’re being more aggressive, cleaning out the infection in addition to giving him IV antibiotics. I’m glad of it, and at the same time terribly worried. Our son’s spring break starts Saturday, so we’ll be going down then. That should be time enough.

And meantime? My son both surprised me and made me laugh today. I was trying to discuss the possibility of him riding the bus home with his best friend on Thursday without his catching on ahead of time. So what I said to my husband on the phone was that “there was an invitation to utilize general academic transport to the residence of a chosen comrade.” My son promptly jumped up and down, saying “I get to ride the bus home with Russell to his house!” So much for obscurity.

Last Wednesday I took the Sophia-cat to the vet, to make sure she had her shots, was treated to prevent fleas, ticks, mites and assorted varieties of worms, and was generally a healthy pussycat. She is indeed. I’ve been referring to her as “6 pounds of cat” since she arrived, and turns out I was only off by a quarter of a pound. She’s not too skinny, either; she’s just a very little cat. (She is also with kitten, a thing which comes as no least surprise for a fully intact outdoor kitty. The vet tells me to expect 2 or 3 offspring, and much to my amusement they are already spoken for.)

Now, as Spring approaches there have been a great many hawks and falcons of assorted types showing up over these country forests and fields. So she was riding in her carrier in the passenger seat of my car, looking out the window, when one of the local red-tailed hawks, sitting beside the road, decided that my van was coming too close and took off, passing no more than 3 feet from her vantage point. I am here to tell you that it was a large bird, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. A large red-tail can grow to four pounds, and my fur-brained feline is all of six. But there she was, yowling at the top of her lungs, clawing at the mesh of her carrier and generally doing her best to get at that bird. I may not speak fluent cat, but I didn’t need it to understand that message. “Lemme out of here, Mom. Lemme at it, c’mon, I can take it, it’s got feathers and a beak, right? I don’t care how big it is. It’s a bird and I’m a cat! That’s my natural prey out there, c’mon, Mom, this isn’t fair – let me out of here!” I, meanwhile, was looking at that thing’s wingspan, probably a good 4 feet across, and thanking my stars that she was safely inside a steel box. She’d have made an nice hors d’oeuvre for that flying appetite. I looked across at my six pounds of enthusiasm and told her that not all birdies were created equal, and that little felines should hide from the really big avians. I’m pretty sure she didn’t agree with me, though.

We are duly re-carred as well, which is a great relief. We picked the new creature up yesterday morning, and then in the afternoon an old and very dear friend of mine came in to visit. She wanted assistance in figuring out what she should wear for a wedding dress next June. So we went through a few things on line, and then I headed for the pattern company websites. She saw something she liked pretty promptly, started thinking through colors/ fabrics, and then I went and retrieved a piece of fabric I had gotten for my own ren faire garb for the coming summer, a heavy ivory ribbon-weave cotton, very thick and soft. The idea was to show her, rather than try to describe, the sort of thing that is in store this season that might make a nice underlayer. Her face lit up, she asked me how far away the fabric store was, and we were off, abandoning her 13 year old son and my husband to their books. It was a blast.

And last night, after much insistence that he would not go to the Purim carnival today (sort of a Jewish version of Mardi Gras, but both child-appropriate and child-focused) our son decided to not only go, but to wear a costume. So last night saw me sewing in haste, turning some glittery bright Indian fabric into a short wrap-coat sort of thing with a tie belt, that our boy could wear over his jeans and turtleneck. Our rabbi took one look at it and said “Joseph in his coat of many colors” – which of course fit admirably. I had not gone costumed, simply because that’s mostly for kids, but when he saw a few other adults in costume he informed me that I should do likewise. This was a conundrum, as home – and all my costumery – was a 45 minute drive away. But I am not always the best about unloading my car, so I went prowling. Sure enough, there were my knee-high mocassin boots and my cloak. Instant costume. I donned them there in the parking lot and went back in, to his expressed satisfaction. He bounced on the inflatable trampoline for a good half hour or more, played Bingo and won, and generally had a fabulous time. And so did I, watching him.

The past half hour has been about typical of the week. I no sooner get on the phone with one person than my other phone – cell if I’m on the land line, or land line if I’m on the cell – rings. And since I’m trying to get a car financed, I keep answering. I’d like to finish one conversation. There is such a thing as being too popular.

But we’ve actually found a car, which is a Good Thing. We pick it up tomorrow morning. Because of Indiana’s inventory tax, this is the season when dealers get rid of anything they can before the deadline date. End result is that we’re getting a 2005 car, still under warranty, for considerably less than book value. The negotiation process was kind of funny, really. Salesman gave my husband a figure. I went back to look at it, having not seen the car, and was given the same number. Now, I think it was pretty clear we liked the car; this was the second time someone had driven it. But I began my own negotiation. So when the salesman said “this is it” I said that we could either negotiate the price or the elimination of the document fee, which I knew perfectly well wasn’t statutory. Salesman looked at owner of dealership and said “do you want to try to negotiate with her? I don’t.” End result was that we’re paying exactly what I wanted to for the car.

Joseph will be having dinner with his best friend tonight, while my husband and I get to return his rental car and then (gasp) have a quiet dinner together and go to Friday night services. Best friend’s mother called and offered, sweet woman that she is. And tomorrow, I believe I’ll be catching up on a bunch of incomplete phone calls. But right now, excuse me please. I have to go sign papers at the bank.

For assorted reasons, a great many things that had been integral parts of my life have been set aside over the past ten years or so. There were lots of reasons: lack of time, lack of money, unpredictable schedule, and a child with neurological wiring problems. One of those things was attending science fiction conventions. So when we received an invitation to a small con I shall not identify because attendance is by invitation only, my first reaction was simply wistful. Then I thought about it. It was to be in Chicago, only an hour’s drive away. It would be exceedingly small, allowing our severely crowd-averse boychik to get used to the whole concept on a more reasonable scale. All in all, we thought it was worth the experiment.

I am pleased to report that it was both a grand success from a parental perspective and a whole lot of fun from a personal one. Our son was introduced to a little girl who’s wired much as he is, and they promptly made friends. He was willing to go into the next room (the whole floor was devoted to the con, so it was safe) without me having to stay with him when the crowd got to be a bit much for him. He told us when he needed to retreat; we had not a single meltdown or tantrum the entire trip. He got to spend a lot of time playing in the pool, which delighted his boyish soul, and time with very tolerant, accepting adults. All in all, he was happy, calm and incredibly well behaved.

And I got to spend time with some friends I’d not seen in years, long enough that some of them didn’t recognize me, (the extra upholstery didn’t help with that) and met some wonderful new people as well. A lot of both folk and filk (s.f. themed folk) music broke out at random intervals, some of it humorous and some serious. Cons and SCA events (another thing mostly given up) are where I’ve generally found the greatest concentration of kindred spirits, and this was no exception. It was a relaxacon (one without much in the way of prescheduled programming), and exactly what I needed. And our son did so well that perhaps, just perhaps, we can start to go to the occasional con again. Losing the part of my life those friends held has felt rather like losing a piece of a puzzle – the picture just isn’t complete without it. And now that piece can be fit back in, because it’s found.

I have indeed found something in my closet, a burgundy velvet dress Li gave me once she got too small for it. It’s spaghetti strapped, and my arms not a treat for the eyes still, so I have staged a raid on the fabric store and come away with some embroidered white chiffon with irridescent sequins. It will go with me today, along with needles, thread and scissors, to be hemmed this evening.

I was telling another friend about it. As he put it, it’s standard s.f. fannish/ SCA attitude: “I have a piece of fabric here, which will become the garment I need on the way to the event at which I need it.” All I can do is laugh, because I can’t count the number of times I’ve done exactly that.

Off and away!

Our son was explaining Lincoln’s assassination to his father. “You shouldn’t shoot someone when he’s doing something important” said our boy earnestly.

That left me wondering. Is it ok if you wait until they’re finished?

I’m going to be attending a dinner on Saturday evening.  I have a lovely yellow Indian cotton dress that was given to me, that I thought I should be able to wear again, and I intended to do so.  Fortunately, I had the sense to try it on before I packed it.

It doesn’t fit yet.  The skirt is fine, but the bodice is snug enough to be uncomfortable.  So I’ll have to figure out something else festive.  Hopefully it will be something already in my closet.