Consequences

If you're of my generation, then you remember vacuum tube radios. You remember vacuum tube televisions. You remember turning on a radio or TV and having to let it "warm up" before it would work. The vacuum tubes literally had to heat up before they would work. 

Then along came transistor radios. They were amazing; they produced sound the instant they were turned on, no warm-up required. I bought my first transistor radio from a mail order company named Olsen. I paid for it with money I had earned by delivering the morning newspaper. The radio had six transistors, as it proudly proclaimed on the front of the case. I bought a rechargeable battery for it, too. It was shaped like a regular 9 volt battery, but when the battery ran down, you could plug it into a little charger that came with the battery, then plug the charger and battery into a wall outlet. It was cheap but it worked.

One day when I was 15 or 16, I left my radio in my dad's car while I helped him work on an old house he had purchased to be rental property. The house wasn't in a good part of town, and so when we came back to his car to go home, the radio was gone. It had been stolen.

I bought another radio. This one was slightly better (and larger) and it contained 8 transistors, a fact that it, too, proudly proclaimed on the front of the radio. Still, there was a place in my heart for that 6 transistor radio. You only buy your first transistor radio once. 

But frankly, I would never have stolen a cheap transistor radio, because at age 15 I had too much self-respect to make myself into a common thief. What's a common thief? When you steal billions of dollars from investors with a bitcoin scam, you're a financial genius. When you steal a cheap transistor radio, you're a common thief. Plus, I didn't know for sure if there was a heaven, but I knew that I didn't want to throw away my shot at getting there on an act of petty thievery. I should note that this was neither the first nor the last act of petty theft I would experience.

The world is full of thieves, and it's full of good people, too. There are people who will give their lives to save yours, even though they don't know you. Maybe the petty thieves I've encountered later woke up and learned to have a little self-respect, so that "petty thief" won't be the only item on their life's resume. I hope so, because, as the preachers and the philosophers have pointed out, our actions are balanced by consequences. Ignore that fact at your own peril. In the end, you only get what you give. It's called karma.

House Ghost

The time was about 1:30 AM. I was in bed. The house was dark except for a dim light in the living room. That light cast its incandescent glow down the hallway to my bedroom door. In the dim light, I saw Nuria get up and walk around the end of the bed and through the bedroom doorway. I watched as she opened the bathroom door and entered the bathroom. I could see her clearly.

I thought, "No one is going to believe this." The reason I thought that was simple: it was because Nuria was lying beside me in bed, and my hand was touching her arm. I could feel the warmth of her skin. I almost awakened her to tell her, "Look, Nuria. It's you!" I didn't because I knew it wasn't Nuria. It was just a kind of apparition of Nuria. 

I kept thinking that anyone I talk to about this is going to accuse me of just dreaming, yet I was awake and I  knew I was awake. A few minutes later, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to use the facilities. I was wide awake, not sleepy at all, so I didn't return to bed. I sat at my PC and began perusing the news.

These kind of things have happened to me a number of times since I moved into this house. I've written about them previously on this blog. Here's one example: Go Figure. Here's another example: Odd Stuff. It's the kind of thing I've learned to shrug off. Maybe these kinds of things happen to everyone and other people simply don't talk about them. Maybe I shouldn't either, lest people think I'm daft in the head. I don't know—the world is a strange place sometimes.

Entering the Labyrinth

This morning I drove Nuria to the Battlefield Park Auto Salvage company to visit with her Camry. She told me she wanted to get some things out of the car before something happened to them. She named the items she wanted to retrieve, and when she said "my parents' rosary beads" it almost went by me, but then a part of my brain said, "uh, what? Rosary beads? In your Camry?"

I had thought her walking away unhurt from that collision was exceptionally good fortune, but maybe there was something else, too. Maybe there was something in the car that protected Nuria. Maybe. I can believe that.

Also in the car was a well-worn coin purse filled with quarters. I thought that was a good idea—for toll booths and parking meters, a coin purse filled with quarters in a handy place where she could easily reach it. Though more and more toll booths take credit cards.

She took the floor mats and the windshield sun shade that she had bought for the car. She took it all and bid farewell to the Camry. 

The gal behind the front desk of the salvage yard said that if they could station a tow truck at Walmart, it would be busy all day towing cars from accidents. A woman sitting near the shop's front door told me her car was hit by a truck entering the Walmart parking lot as she was trying to exit. She could see the collision coming and began backing up to avoid the truck, but a vehicle behind her prevented her from backing up enough, and the truck scraped her car. The truck driver should have stopped but didn't seem to care. He told the investigating officer that the accident was the woman's fault—that she had hit him. The cop knew the truck driver, and so the cop wrote the accident report as being the woman's fault. Fortunately for the lady, a witness stepped forward and ultimately the report was changed to put the fault on the truck driver where it belonged.

We ended up back at Walmart and bought groceries. We left Walmart and pushed the shopping cart back to my Jeep and put the groceries into the cargo space in the back of the Jeep. A bitterly cold wind swept across the parking lot. We came home and carried many bags of groceries into the house. For dinner we had baked fish, mashed potatoes, and red, white, and orange baby carrots. Then we took a break before eating homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

The wheels are just beginning to turn on the auto insurance. There are many threads that must yet be woven together. I've had an auto accident myself, but it was long ago. It was my fault. But that's another story of another time and a very different VirtualWayne than the one who lives today. I hope none of my readers have to go through the auto insurance labyrinth due to an accident. It's not fun.

Nuria - Part 2

Yesterday's post was about my domestic partner, Nuria. Today's post is about Nuria, too. But mostly it's about her Toyota Camry.

Nuria bought her 2009 Camry in July. It was the first vehicle she had owned in years. She was so proud of that car, even though it was used—or, as they say on the TV adverts, "pre-owned." She would go out in the mornings and wipe the dew off the Camry's windows. She would clean the dust off the roof of the car.

This morning, Nuria told me she was going to the library to make some copies. Ironically, I recently bought her a copier/printer because she had been going to the library so often, in order to print and make copies of immigration documents. But she had to print 21 pages and she didn't want to use up all the ink in the printer, so she drove to the library. And that's where this story should have ended. But—

The library was closed. On Saturdays it opens at 10AM and she had arrived at about 9:30. So she decided to drive to Walmart and pick up a couple items. She made it to Walmart and had stopped on the road, waiting for traffic to clear so that she could make a left turn into Walmart's parking lot. She was in the left turn lane with her left turn flasher blinking. In the rear-view mirror, she saw a car approaching fast from behind her, but she assumed it was in the adjacent lane and would pass her Camry on the right. 

Suddenly, Nuria felt a terrible jolt and her car spun around in the middle of the road. The approaching car had rammed the back of her Camry. Her beloved Camry appears to be "totaled." Meaning: un-fixable, too badly damaged to repair. The rear of the vehicle was caved in, and the chassis was warped enough that Nuria couldn't get the driver's door to open.

People immediately stopped to help her. Nuria wasn't hurt, but an elderly man who had been driving the other car that hit her car had blood on his shirt and pants. Bystanders called 911. Within five minutes, police and an ambulance were on-scene. Nuria called me and told me she had been in an accident. I told her to be sure to get the other driver's insurance information.

After I got there, which took about ten minutes, an officer gave Nuria a card with the case number for the accident. The police will collect the necessary information about the drivers and what had happened. One man volunteered that he was a witness to the accident and he talked to the police. 

An officer gave Nuria his ID card with the case number written on it. When we left the scene, men were still sweeping glass off the street and the two cars had yet to be towed away. 

I took one photo of the Camry. The scene was busy with police, ambulance, maybe a fire truck. I was more concerned with making sure Nuria was alright and that we had all the information we would need.

Nuria is worried about her personal items that had to be left behind in her car. I think they'll be okay. The car should be locked, wherever it's taken. We've reported the accident to Nuria's insurance company and gave them the case number, and they'll handle the rest (I hope). I don't know if Nuria will have to go to court, but the courthouse is at the end of my street—easy to get to.

Now Nuria will have to start searching again for a good used car. That may take weeks. But there is no rush to get it done. 

So that was my and Nuria's Saturday morning. How was yours?

Nuria

My last blog post was six days ago. It seems longer to me. I guess I'm not doing much these days.

Sometimes Nuria (my domestic partner) gets quiet. She did that this morning. She was quiet a long time. I asked her if anything was wrong. She said, "No." Yet I knew something was wrong. Sometimes people don't know how to put something into words. Then I have to dig. I ask questions until I start to feel I'm getting somewhere, and then I drill down into that topic, whatever it may be.

I finally got Nuria to talk about what was bothering her. She misses her family in Costa Rica: her three daughters and her three grandchildren. There is Joanna, her oldest child, who has two children, a boy and a girl, "R" and Stephanie. ("R" is, of course, a nickname.) There is Maria, her middle child. And there is Mary, her youngest child, who has a son called Nick.

I can't replace her family, and as of now, she can't leave the country. She is applying for permanent resident status and she can't leave the country until August of 2023. It doesn't take much to entertain me. I can spend hours looking at YouTube. But Nuria is more of a "people person" than I am. She likes being around people. I'm not a people person. She had a family. I didn't; not a "real" family. She had a life with many friends. I had a life with a few cherished friends. She likes people. I tolerate people. 

(I just went to the door to accept a package—a large brown box from Walmart—addressed to Nuria. She's in buying mode. I never know what to get people. Humans of my milieu already have everything they need and really want. Trying to select a gift for them is like trying to decide what kind of icing you want to put on your red velvet cake, only infinitely more complex. My father couldn't do it, either—make my mother happy. As a child, I felt sad for my mother, who bought birthday and Christmas gifts for everyone in the family but received from my father whatever dregs remained on the drugstore shelves on Christmas Eve.)

I can't make people happy. They have to do it. I'm here if they need me. I can ask questions, but I can't always fix what is broken. Especially when someone is a long way from home and family. When people around me are sad, it makes me sad when I can't help them. But what will be, will be.

Soccer

Last night, Nuria and I were asleep in bed. I was dreaming. In my dream, I pinched someone, and I pinched hard. Then, both in reality and in my dream, I heard Nuria squeal, "Owwwww!!!"

I suddenly understood that I had pinched Nuria and I hoped she was okay. I wanted to wake up and ask her if she was okay, but I just couldn't wake up. I teetered on the brink of wakefulness, half awake and half asleep. Nuria didn't make any further sounds, so I assumed she was okay. I resumed my dream. The pinch and Nuria's squeal of pain are the only parts of the dream that I remember.

In fact, I had forgotten all about it until this morning, when Nuria said, "You pinched me really hard last night."

She said that my night was wild. I was rolling around in bed, and I was talking. That is not very unusual for me. I often roll from side to side in bed, lying on my left side, then my right side, then my left side, and so on. Talking while I'm asleep isn't too unusual, either. Nuria takes it all in stride. But I know I wouldn't want to sleep in the same bed with me.

Nuria is watching TV now. She's watching the USA play the Netherlands in the World Cup. That would be "soccer," which is called "football" in countries not named USA. Netherlands is ahead with 35 minutes remaining.  

I don't know much about soccer. I can watch it for a few minutes, but it seems like the most boring game humans have ever invented. Maybe that's because so many games end with the score 0 - 0 or 1 - 0. 

"Hey, VirtualWayne, let's go to the stadium and watch two teams not score any points for 90 minutes."

"Thanks, but I'd rather do something more exciting than watch soccer—like, take a nap."

But to each his own.

Nights Like This

I went to bed at 9pm.

I couldn't sleep.

I got up at 12am and looked for my bottle of Xanax. I take only about one pill per year and the bottle is 5 years old. Even expired, the pills probably still work. But I couldn't find it. I went back to bed at 2:22am.

I couldn't sleep. I tried not to toss and turn because I know it bothers Nuria. 

I heard the boiler start up at 3:57am.

I heard a train come through the city at 4:10am. It blew its air horn. Then there was only the sound of the boiler. Then the locomotive blew its air horn again. The second time was louder than the first, and instantly I knew what track it was traveling on.

I heard the boiler cut off at 4:32am. The boiler had run for 35 minutes. It used to run for 20 minutes. Is the problem with the boiler or with the thermostat?

I got up again at 4:45am. It's still dark. I sat down at my pc and I read a lot of news on YouTube. A small electric heater is running at my feet. I'm not even close to sleepy. The radiator just banged loudly—it's cooling down. I'd go for a walk if it wasn't 46°F outside with light rain. Sunrise is an hour away.

I hate nights like this.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. It's noon. Nuria and I are heating a frozen pizza for lunch. It's a beautiful sunny day and the temperature is 60°F. The normal auto traffic on my street is sparse, almost absent. People are in their homes or they've traveled somewhere else. 

I slept late and skipped breakfast. Soon, Nuria and I will be having lunch: pizza. The Walmart pizza is quite good, even though it starts out frozen. Afterward, my plans include chocolate chip cookies for dessert. 

Later, we'll have Thanksgiving dinner. As there are only two of us, Nuria is keeping it simple. We'll eat Smithfield hickory-smoked sliced ham with pineapple, walnut salad (apples with honey and walnuts and celery and mayo), sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and velvet cake (with cream cheese icing). We'll drink a delicious bottle of alcohol-free champagne—also called  sparkling cider. I call it a simple dinner because I don't have to put it together. But if I were living alone, I'd just make a hamburger. Better yet, I might just drive to Burger King. Their What-a-Burgers are tastier than my homemade burgers.

The aforementioned red velvet cake really does look like red velvet before the icing is put on it. You can't buy red velvet cake at Burger King, so that would be a downside of eating there. I've got ground hamburger in the fridge, and two buns in the bread box, so we'll have home-cooked hamburgers for lunch tomorrow. And, probably, red velvet cake—for the remainder of the week. 

Everyone, I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday, and let's not forget why we celebrate the holiday. Thanksgiving  commemorates the colonial Pilgrims' harvest meal that they shared with Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The Wampanoag Indians had been key to the survival of the colonists during the first year they arrived in 1620. Over 400 years later, that harvest celebration is still going. Nuria informs me that in Costa Rica, the government has announced that the country will celebrate Thanksgiving beginning this year. Most Costa Ricans know nothing about the US holiday and don't know what a turkey is, so I suspect that in Costa Rica the holiday will be less about celebrating a successful harvest that happened 400 years ago, and more about eating yourself into a coma and getting falling-down drunk. Which is fine with me. To each his own.

Store Trip

It is Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving. Nuria and I made a run to Wally World to buy a few items. I had been hearing on the news that prices were going up and things might get scare, but it didn't prepare me for this:

<< This is the egg department at Walmart. The shelves are mostly empty of eggs. Due to reflections in the glass doors, the shelves appear to be filled with something. But actually, only the topmost shelves had items for sale. Normally eggs cost $1 to $1.50, and I've seen them as low as 34 cents per dozen. But the few cartons of eggs that remained were priced—well, see for yourself in the photo below.

The price is $14.80/carton, and if you look closely you can see that that price is for the store brand, "Great Value." However, the eggs in stock are "Eggland's Best," which normally are higher priced. I guess the stocker figured that for $14.80, they might as well give customers the "top shelf" brand rather than the store brand.

Thanksgiving is in two days. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. I know everyone won't, and that's a shame. I've spent many—most—holidays alone, so the shine is long gone from that day. But Nuria and I will be together and I know she'll have something special for Thanksgiving dinner. For one thing, she bought a bottle of rum, which I suspect goes into some kind of cake. I bet it's called "Rum Cake" but that's just a guess. I know little about cooking. What I call cooking involves either a microwave oven or a wok. 

Try to have a nice holiday. If you feel overly lonely, go to an Applebee's and sit at the bar. Have a burger and a beer. You'll probably have company. 

Till next time. 

The Week Is Done

I haven't posted a blog lately. I've been a little busy. Nuria and I had a lot of limbs and leaves to clean out of the yard from the previously mentioned tree-cutting. The limbs had to be cut to fit trash containers. That job took five days plus two 45-gallon trash receptacles plus 15 44-gallon 7-ply construction waste bags. 

The bathroom ceiling was damaged by water from a roof leak. I repaired the damaged plaster with joint compound and then painted the ceiling. The dining room ceiling was also damaged by water from a roof leak. I repaired the damage with joint compound and then painted that portion of the ceiling. I think I've got the roof leaks fixed but I'll know for sure when the next hurricane comes through town.

So the ceiling repairs are done and I've just finished dinner. I'm listening to some mellow jazz music, which Nuria and I do every evening at dinner and sometimes afterward. The music tonight is called "Monday Jazz ❤️ Smooth Jazz Music for Starting Your Week On A High Note" and it's on YouTube here.*

Tomorrow is election day, but it's an off-year election—I think that's what they call it. It's one of those elections where you don't know anyone on the ballot. Somebody is running for dogcatcher. Somebody else is running for school board. I don't know any of them, and I don't have dogs or kids.

*Note: On Tuesday, the day after I posted this blog, the link to the music video now displays the message:  "This Live Stream Recording Is Not Available." Maybe the video is only available on Mondays? I don't know.