Thoughts

I slept. I woke. I slept again. I woke again. 

When I slept, I dreamed. When I woke, I thought many thoughts.

I thought about Sissy, a woman I didn't know but had seen and talked with using WhatsApp. She was a friend of a friend. She was 91 years old but still independent. She drove wherever she wanted or needed to go. Two weeks ago she drove to a Chinese restaurant to buy a takeout lunch. She paid for it and turned to go, but something went wrong. She tripped and fell. She broke her hip. She went to a hospital and surgeons operated on her. Afterward, she was in discomfort and her health fluctuated. Her oxygen level went up and down so she had to stay in the bed. She couldn't be moved to a rehab center. After a week she said she'd had enough and requested to be put on hospice care. Another week passed and she died. According to what I've heard about her, she was a good-hearted woman who cared about others. We all will pass through a gate one day. We don't know what's on the other side. We have ideas, but we don't know. I hope Sissy gets a warm welcome home from family and friends who passed before her.

I slept again.

I woke. I thought about the recent shooting in Miami. Two dead and twenty one injured. Some of the injured may die. What will happen to those shooters when it's their time to pass through that gate? Will they be welcomed by a friendly spirit or will they be greeted by something that produces fear and terror? This life is real. And the hereafter is real. But suppose you say you're not sure the hereafter is real. It might be, and it might not be, so you could say there is a fifty-fifty chance of Payback. Of Karma. Of Reward and Punishment. Then my advice is: behave wisely. One day everything you give others may be returned to you, in spades.

I slept again.

I woke. I had missed breakfast. I had missed lunch. But it was okay. I decided to get up and practice Spanish. Hours passed. My friend in Costa Rica joined me on Skype. My browser was on Duolingo and I shared my screen with her so she could see and hear the same things that I saw and heard. She helps me learn her language. More hours passed. My friend signed off. Now it's after 9PM and I still haven't eaten anything today. I'm not hungry, but I'm going to eat something anyway—probably a factory meal from the freezer. It's either that or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Buen apetito to me.

I hope you have a good week.

Pentatonix

The song of the day is Love Me When I Don't from the 2021 album The Lucky Ones by a cappella band Pentatonix.

Oven Failure Act Three

I wrote about this in a blog published in February, 2018. I was heating a meal in my microwave oven when the oven went dark. It was dead. I knew at once that a fuse had blown. I grabbed a screwdriver and removed the sheet metal housing and looked inside. I saw a fuse, and I pried it out and checked it. It was blown. There is a TV repair shop a few blocks from my house, so I drove there and showed the owner the dead fuse. It was a 5x25 mm ceramic cartridge fuse. Some of you will know what that is. He had a replacement and it cost a dollar. I came home and installed the new fuse and the oven came back to life.

Flash forward about two years. I was heating an item in the microwave oven when it went dead. Of course, I immediately suspected the fuse—the replacement fuse I had installed two years earlier. I removed the screws holding the cabinet in place and checked the fuse. It was blown. So I made another trip to the TV repair shop and bought another fuse. Price: still one dollar. I took it home and installed it and put the cover on the oven. I was back in business. Plus, I had another blog post for my trouble

I was back in business until about six months ago. One day, I pushed the Start button on the oven and it went dark. Dead again. But this was Sunday and the TV repair shop (a one-man affair) was closed. Where could I get another fuse? My mind wandered back to the days of my youth when I used to make fuses. I didn't have a choice. I had to make a fuse or drive to Wally World and buy a new oven. 

I got out a roll of aluminum foil. I tore off a small piece of foil and wrapped it around the bad fuse. I pushed the shiny fuse-shaped object back into the fuse holder and I screwed the cabinet in place. I put a glass of water in the oven and gave it 45 seconds. I pushed Start. The oven came on and ran for 45 seconds. I opened the oven door and checked the water. It was hot. I was back in business.

As I said, that was about six months ago. I use the oven several times a day and it always works like a champ. But isn't it dangerous, you ask, to defeat the fuse. Ordinarily, yes, it could be. But the oven is all metal. If a fire starts inside, it will be because I am here operating the oven. Because the oven is metal, fire cannot escape but, of course, smoke can. At which point I'll unplug the oven and carry it out to my back yard and drop it on the ground. But so far, there's been no sign of trouble. The oven turns on, and it runs, and it turns off when it's supposed to.

But don't attempt this yourself. I'm a professional. I have a faux parchment and shelves of dusty textbooks and even a class ring to prove I'm a professional. Though I could easily buy a new oven, it bothers me to throw away 50 pounds of good electrical equipment because a one-tenth ounce fuse is blown. I'm going to use that oven until it smokes!

Which is just what my mother did, and I guess that proves I'm my mother's son. I wrote about her experience here. (I wrote about it in 2019, but she passed in 2003, so that blog post is more of a fond memory than breaking news.) Maybe I've got a bit of Scottish blood in my ancestry, but I like to "use it up" or "wear it out" before I throw it away.

We'll See

Here is a Zen story that I heard many years ago:

A farmer owned a horse. He used the horse to plow his field, to sow his seeds, harvest his crops and take them to market. One day the horse jumped over a fence and ran away. The farmer's neighbors told him how unlucky he was because now he didn't have a horse to help with his farm work. "This is bad luck," the people said. The farmer replied, "Good luck, bad luck. We'll see."

The next day the horse returned and brought with it three wild horses. The farmer's neighbors told him how lucky he was because now he had four horses. "You'll be able to plant and harvest more crops. You will make more money. You may even buy more land. You'll be rich! This is good luck," they said. The farmer replied, "Good luck, bad luck. We'll see."

The next day the man's son tried to mount one of the wild horses and it bucked and threw the young man to the ground. This caused the young man to break his leg. The farmer's neighbors came and told the farmer how unlucky he was. "Now you won't have your son to help you plant crops! This will cause you hardship. This is bad luck," they said. The farmer replied, "Good luck, bad luck. We'll see."

The next day a military unit came by the man's farm. They were conscripting young men into the army. They saw the farmer's son with his broken leg and they said, "We cannot use this man." And the military men left and continued down the road. The farmer's neighbors came and told the farmer how lucky he was. "Your son escaped being conscripted into the army. You still have your son. This is good luck," they said. The farmer said, "Good luck, bad luck. We'll see."

The point of this Zen story is that we often label events as good or bad, even though they may turn out to be the opposite. Events are just events and we don't know if they will turn out to be bad for us or good for us. Meanwhile, labeling them as good luck or bad luck just adds emotional drama that is usually counterproductive. The future is not ours to know. 

At this point in my life, I'm going through one of those "good luck/bad luck" scenarios. I try hard not to think about it as good or bad but rather, it is what it is. I'll deal with it as much as I can. As for the future? We'll see.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

My friend Nuria flew back to Costa Rica Friday. The trip from Richmond, Virginia to San Jose, Costa Rica took about 14 hours. That included layovers in Chicago and Houston.

Now I'm home. The house is quiet. But I video chatted with Nuria twice today, and we had a Duolingo Spanish language session via Skype. It's nice to be able to do those things. It hasn't been that long ago when, if you wanted to talk to a distant friend, you wrote a letter to them and in a few days you might receive a reply. Or you picked up the phone and made a long distance call. I don't know what a long distance call from Virginia to Costa Rica would have cost in those days, but it probably wasn't cheap.

Nuria wants to return in November and stay for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But her plans are at the mercy of USCIS: United States Customs and Immigration Service. They can be capricious. You can have your visa and passport and everything is in order, then an immigration officer doesn't like your accent or the look of your clothes or whatever, and he says to you, "You can't enter the U.S. this time." And just like that, you are sent back home. I'm sure that breaks the hearts of many would-be visitors.

Sunday is a half hour away. I'm 30 minutes from midnight. I think I'll look for an evening news video on YouTube and watch it before I go to bed, because an 11:30PM bedtime still seems early for me. 

Goodnight, all.

Another Day With Nuria

Apologies to my regular readers who may be expecting a new blog post every day (or so). One of the advantages of living alone is that I have plenty of time for writing blogs. Of course, blog-writing comes at the expense of certain other things such as washing dishes, cooking meals, taking out the garbage, making beds, and of course doing laundry. But as I live alone, there is no one to give a damn whether those other things get done in a timely manner. And so they don't. 

For the last 5 weeks I've had a visitor from Costa Rica in my home. Nuria seems to enjoy house-cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, buying groceries, and organizing my home. So I should have plenty of time to blog, right? Well, there's one catch. She doesn't drive. To be specific, she can drive but she doesn't have a U.S. driver's license. So when she buys food, I drive her to the store and push the shopping cart around the aisles. When she buys doodads for my home (or for her home in Costa Rica), I drive her to the store and push the shopping cart up and down the aisles.

Take today as an example. I got up early, I trimmed my beard and gave myself a haircut, with my Latina friend doing the finishing touches. I bathed and dressed. Then I killed a half hour watching TV until the city library opened at 9AM.

Then I took Nuria to the library so we could print pages that I had uploaded to Dropbox at home. You see, I don't have a printer. I've needed a printer just twice in the last twenty years. So I upload the pages I want printed to the Web, then I drive to the library and use one of their computers to print the pages to their printer. 

Then I drove us to the nearby Food Lion for some meal ingredients. Then I drove to the Post Office so she could mail the pages we so recently printed. 

Then I drove to my dermatologist's office for my annual skin inspection. I've had skin cancer so I figure an annual checkup is a good idea. 

Then we drove to Olive Garden for lunch. It was open for seating, though at reduced capacity, of course. I ordered Pasta e Fagioli and Nuria ordered Fetuccini Alfredo. They came with a house salad and breadsticks, and both were delicious.

After lunch we drove to Walmart for further shopping, this time for a little foodstuff for my house and some gifts when she's back in Costa Rica.

When we got home it was mid-afternoon. I pulled the lawn tractor out of the garage, fired it up, and spent about 30 minutes mowing the yard. I was tired. I lay down for a while and went to sleep. I got up again to watch NCIS and have dinner. While we nibbled on dinner, we watched a movie: 1993's Falling Down starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall. It's a funny film, and it's a tragic film as well. I saw it years ago, but re-watching it was worth the time. We both enjoyed it.

By the time the movie ended, the clock on the wall was approaching 11PM. I told Nuria I would be in bed by twelve. I've gone past midnight now, but not by a lot. The time is 12:15AM. So where's my blogging time? 

I'll get some time back after Friday, when Nuria flies home. I've enjoyed her company and I'll miss her. Maybe, if all the stars align properly, she'll be back.