I'm Meeeeellllltttttting

We had a heat index of over 110 degrees yesterday. Today, at 10:00 a.m. the index is already hovering at 100. There isn't any rain in the foreseeable future, and I can't think of a thing to smile about. I feel like a candle sitting on a stove eye every time I take a step outside. I can almost feel myself melting down to a puddle. It's like trying to breathe underwater with all this humidity in the air.

Even Buford the Big Blue Dog is feeling the heat (he says whoever calls these 'dog days' never talked to a dog) and is ready to come back inside as soon as he's made one circle of the yard instead of his usual meandering. Of course, he still hasn't figured out that he lives at OUR house and he goes next door to Pete's house and howls at the door until I go to our door and call him over. He trots over happily and I can't figure out if he's really just too stupid to live, or if he's got it in his head that for some reason he is supposed to follow that protocol. The goats are pretty much living under the shade of the big oak tree in their pasture, and the horses seem to be the only living beings on the farm that are mindless of the heat. They still spend their day grazing away in the sunshine.

Whenever I talk about temperature and hating to be hot it always brings back a faded memory from when I was probably 5 or 6 years old and one of our neighbors passed away. In those days, it was customary for everyone in the valley to go to the home of the deceased and "sit with the family." We arrived and went inside to talk to the widow. She was sitting in front of the fireplace, rocking and crying and in the middle of her tears she said "I hope wherever Elmer is there's a good fire going, he hates to be cold." I stifled a giggle, looking around the room to see if the adults found that amusing. Nobody else so much as cracked a smile. It's one of the first times I remember realizing that my sense of humor wasn't on the same wavelength as everyone else.

Elmer would probably love it here today. We've definitely "got a good fire going."

The times they are a'changin'

I don't deal well with change. The kind that's life-altering, not the kind that jingles in your pocket. The jingly kind I deal really well with. Especially nickels. No idea why I've always had an affinity for nickels, but at one time I had completed my collection of one of every different nickel minted between 1946 and 1979.

No, it's the other kind of change I would choose to avoid at all costs. The kind that leaves me gasping in horror at a potential learning curve that looks suspiciously like the road signs going down a treacherous mountain pass. "Dangerous Curves Ahead...S." I recently almost had a nervous breakdown upgrading to Windows 7. I was perfectly happy that my desktop had XP and I had even accepted Vista when it came on my laptop, but... Windows 7 threw me. Unfortunately I purchased it the same week I bought a Chocolate Touch cell phone (disappointing in many ways, the biggest being that there is nothing 'chocolate' about it) so I was in culture shock on so many levels.

I admit I love gadgets. And I own my share of them. I'm all for aquiring "toys" that make life easier or more interesting, but I'm the first to admit that we've ALL become too addicted to having the newest and flashiest gadgets. And sometimes some of them are more trouble than they're worth. I'm also not sure that they're sending the right signal to a new generation that teethes on a computer mouse and is sung to sleep by an iPod. There's no doubt that the cord to their computer is going to be far more binding than any umbilical cord to their mother.

I can remember the good old days (Good Lord, I sound just like Mama) when my cousin and I used our very vivid imaginations to come up with escapades for our Ken and Barbie to get into. We talked for the first time about sex when we were putting our dolls away and Ken and Barbie ended up in the same compartment face-to-face. I think I was 12. Kids that age now are already dating and in-not-as-rare-as-you'd-think-cases getting pregnant. We made up games to play when we went to our grandparents' houses where there were no games or toys. And we were never bored. Ever. A great gift for us was a new clean notebook... where I would write stories that she would illustrate. We watched an occasional episode of Bewitched or I Love Lucy, but we'd rather be alone, creating our own entertainment. Our heroes were Superman and Wonderwoman instead of vampires and werewolves and too-happy teenagers with perfect pitch, teeth and wardrobes.

On long trips, my mom carried a totebag with only books, coloring books, crayons and pencils. Yep, I was an abused child. I didn't have my own DVD player and a bagful of movies or a Nintendo or Game Boy to keep me entertained. I either amused myself or played "I Spy" or "Car Tag" games with my parents.

Recently I went to the grocery store, fifteen minutes from home, and realized when I walked into the store that I'd left my cell phone at home. I could barely shop for worrying about it. What if someone needed me? What if I needed someone? Yet, it wasn't that many years ago that I made a 10-hour trip alone and used a pay phone when I got there to tell my family that I'd arrived.

My dad thought I was nuts when I wanted an 8-track player for the ten-year-old Javelin I was proudly driving to school my senior year (it wasn't "mine" but I was allowed to drive it). He reminded me that it had an 'FM radio for heaven's sake'. I rolled my eyes and said "Oh, daddy, you just don't understand." I guess that's what kids say today when they turn sixteen and want their fresh-off-the-showroom-floor high-dollar sports car to come equipped with an mP3 player and a port for their iPod.

I can remember when you got free maps at service stations. Maps that unfolded once and then no one but my mother could ever fold them back into their original form. People still take free road maps at state Welcome Centers. But, they take them for souvenirs or to use in scrapbooking their trip memories, not because they need them (or know how to read them). After all, they have a GPS on the dash of their car and if that fails their cell phone can give them step by step directions to their destination. I used to sit in the back seat and trace our trip with a marking pen on an old map glued to cardboard. I learned north and south, east and west. Learned about distances and amused myself by finding odd names on the towns in the countrside along the interstate. While I found my TomTom GPS intriguing for the first couple of days, now it only gets turned on when I get lost and am grateful for the tinny voice telling me to "turn left in twenty yards" when I punch in the instructions that, just like Dorothy Gates (no relation to Bill), I want to go home. I'm obviously not in Kansas any more!

When the power goes off now, I can't imagine what kids do for entertainment. I can only hope that Mom and Dad have stocked up on the right size batteries! I used to enjoy getting together with our extended family for Game Night. We played Monopoly and cards and dominoes. We talked while we played and we listened to each other. Almost everything that a kid today finds amusing runs either off a power plug or a battery. And forget trying to talk to a kid who's immersed in a game. You'll be lucky if all you get is a terse "wait 'til I finish this level."

I'm certainly not knocking all the new technology at our fingertips. I'm sort of a gadget queen and I love seeing what's coming up next. But, that doesn't mean that I don't realize fully what we're giving up in return for all this technology. I hope that all of the gadgets don't completely take over our humanity, leaving us floating on this Earthship in a common collective having lost our individuality and creativity...like the Borg that Jean Luc fought so valiantly.

Those of us who recall the best of the good old days will continue to fight to not become assimilated. But, in my case at least, I'll do it with my iPod turned on and my cell phone on my hip.

There's No Fool Like...

How many trite old phrases and idioms can you come up with? Quick. You have thirty seconds.

"A penny saved is a penny earned," "A stitch in time saves nine," "Marry in haste, repent at leisure," "Practice makes perfect," "Nature abhors a vacuum" (so does my dog) and the one that I'm finding will always be true as long as Bill Gates lives.... "Change is inevitable."

I have been awaiting with great anticipation the arrival of my brand spanking new, right off the assembly line (OK, actually the refurbish line, but new to me anyway) computer with Windows 7 *sound of angels singing*. I've had a soft spot for Hewlett Packard since my first Pavilion desktop 9 years ago. They have great tech support, (which I've had to use way more than I'd prefer lately) and I adore my HP photo printer. My HP laptop was a lemon from day one, and was the replacement for a different lemon... but Clark has been really pleased with his Pavilion that's now three months old, so, after checking lots of comparison sites and reading lots of reviews, I held my breath and clicked on the "send to cart" button for a feisty little Pavilion of my own.

I really wanted a Gateway, had my heart set on a particular one, but would you believe that Gateway computers don't come off the assembly line with a wireless card? How stupid is that? They're losing money right and left from people like me who actually like to connect to the internet via their desktop. I sent them a nice note with the promise that if they would cough up the $20 for a wireless card, I'd order a computer from them. I got back a form letter telling me that my message was of course ultra important to them and they'd be back with me shortly. The 'shortly' note contained a link to the Gateway website and another form letter (using abominable English grammar and spelling) telling me that if I'd just look at Gateway computers, I surely would buy.  I sent back a not-so-nice note to which they didn't respond. 

Anyway, here I was awaiting the arrival of my fancy schmancy new Pavilion with W-7. Everyone has raved about how awesome Windows 7 is, how much I'm going to love it, how much better it is than Vista (duh, what wouldn't be?) and that it had been designed to make life simpler for common folk such as myself. 

I will now respond to all of the above with a word my grandfather used only in cases of dire disbelief and disgust. 

Horseshit. 

I wish all of those folks on the commercials who proudly said that THEY had designed Windows 7 would line up so I could kick them one by one in the ass. 

Windows 7 is just another marketing tool by Mr. Gates to make all the techies race out to purchase software to do the same thing they could do before at greater cost and energy output. And in the meantime, people like me who simply want a computer that does what we ask it to do when we want it to do it are forced to learn things we just weren't meant to know. It's not true that you can't teach old dogs new tricks but it is true that some of us old dogs (bitches?) just don't WANT to learn them. We have enough tricks. 

I have to grudgingly admit that the Snippet tool is pretty cool... allowing you to cut anything from a website or document and save it as a jpg or gif. 
Other than that, I ain't impressed. Thanks to this delightful new 'upgrade' (HA!)... 

1. If I run Mozilla Firefox, I have to put my face practically against the screen and then use a magnifying glass to read the text on websites. I downloaded a gadget to give me a 'zoom' button, which worked great until I rebooted and it disappeared. As far as I can tell, after downloaded four different browsers, the only one that works effectively in 7 is Microsoft Explorer. Surprise! 

2. I have almost no choices of themes, backgrounds, screen savers, etc. OK, I'm not called the Gadget Queen for nothing. If I'm going to have bells and whistles, I want them to be loud and gaudy. 

3. Nothing is in an obvious place. It took me an hour to figure out how to change some of the settings that were fairly obvious on both XP and Vista. 

4.  The icons in the taskbar are all grey. A little white flag tells me whether I have any messages, from whom I don't know. Tiny white bars fill up grey spaces to show me how good my wireless signal is (another gripe, damn Verizon for merging with someone yet again and screwing with my signal) a white on gray speaker shows my sound level. Like I said, loud and gaudy folks. Something I can see, please! 

But, worst of all is simply that...it's different. Very very different. And in case you might not know me very well, let me reiterate that I do NOT like change. In my opinion, the only good change occurs when you're a baby with a full diaper. After that, it's all downhill. 

Maybe things wouldn't have been so upsetting if I hadn't had everything hit at once. If we hadn't awakened this morning to Clark's computer giving us the blue screen of death. (Of course it waited until the day after my new almost-identical computer arrived. *sigh* Too late for me to change my mind and bite the bullet to put a wireless card in the Gateway.) 

If  two days ago I hadn't switched my cell phone to a Chocolate Touch. (Talk about culture shock. My phone rings and it goes to voicemail before I can get the damned thing unlocked, slid open and answered)

And two weeks ago I traded my full-size laptop for a netbook.

All in all, no matter how hard I want to fight against it, I guess it's true that change is inevitable. And apparently resistance is futile. 

A Moment of Silence Please

We have an ailing member of the family, and the doctors have told us there is no hope--death is inevitable. It might be possible to do a transplant of one part or the other, but even if it continues to live it will not be the same quality of life that it has had in the past, so I have decided to pull the plug.

That's right. Andrew, my old Gateway desktop computer is going to that big computer recycler in the sky. Even though a sassy new desktop is on its way to me as we speak, and I know life will probably be easier and faster with its massive processor humming along beside me, it's just never easy to say goodbye to an old friend.

Does anyone else get so attached to inanimate objects? I still remember when Myrtle, our old 1980's butter-yellow Dodge minivan finally gave up the ghost. I wrote dirges and poems in her honor and I cried real tears when she was hauled away to the junkyard. One of the paragraphs I remember writing was "The vehicles we drive say so much about us. . .and for some time now Myrtle and I have watched each other slowly and sadly falling apart. I have indeed felt many mornings as if my own headliner was sagging and ripped, and my upholstery was fading with the sun. Both of us are starting to show more miles than is comfortable on our odometers, and neither of us can any longer travel at the speeds we were designed for. Neither one of us looks like the models in the magazines any more, although both of us were certainly fine specimens of our model in our day. Myrtle has taken us many wonderful miles, and she'll be sadly missed."

Andrew and I have been through a lot together too. He's patiently processed my words, written over them and then written over them again as I labor and fret over how to twist them into shape to make them say what my mind is hearing. Together he and I completed a labor-intensive book of purebred dog data; we've typed "The End" to two novels and in between all of the major stuff Andrew has always been there as the electronic liason between me and my friends around the globe that I only get to see through my computer monitor. It was only after the pixels had battered around through Andrews circuits that I could see my neice's new baby. Because of Andrew I could watch the tornadoes hurtling towards us and rejoice when they missed us; the merriment quickly dying into sadness as I realized who and what was in its path. It was a keylogger placed in his files that proved the treachery of a supposed friend, and it was on his keyboard that I met the man that was destined to be my husband. I've read and reread novels and books downloaded via Andrew. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe looked vastly different on a wide-screen computer monitor than on the ruffling pages of a book.

Andrew has processed the entries from our new business, helped me expand my creative side without leaving my desk chair and through it all he's been stoically silent. The creaks and groans he's emitting now tell me its time to let go. Even if I weren't aware that although he was an icon of greatness in his day, technology has passed him by. I know how he feels. I just wish there was a way to recycle people.

Rest well, dear Andrew. And thanks for all the fish.

Don't Drink the Water

If you come to visit us, I'd suggest that, just as if you were visiting friends in Mexico, you don't drink the water. Our water won't give you Montezuma's Revenge, but I can almost guarantee that your belt will be tight before you're looking through the bottom of your glass.

That's right. Our well-water is apparently calorie, fat and carb-laden.

It's the only explanation I can come up with to explain the widening girths on both Clark and I and now on Buford the Big Blue Dog. I had noticed Clark's "tool shed" and my "spare tire" and I was getting suspicious of the culprit, but it wasn't until we took Buford to visit his Aunt Ellen DVM and she weighed him in at a whopping 95.1 pounds (a 20 pound increase since he came to live with us in March) that I finally became convinced that we have a real problem here on the farm.

What other excuse can you have for the fact that rescue horses are quickly fat and sassy after coming to live with us as skeletons walking? How else could you explain the fact that although Clark and I both follow a fairly strict diet (that includes only minute amounts... ie: rarely over twice or three times the recommended serving size... of Bit O'Honey candy, Blue Bunny banana split ice cream, biscuits, potato chips, fried chicken, Fruit Loops, Fritos and Triscuits) and we dole out Buford's kibble sparingly (diligently following the label's suggested daily diet for an adult Rottweiler).

If you rule out our diet as being the culprit, that leaves only exercise. And Lord knows I get enough what with jumping to conclusions, running around in circles, pushing my luck and getting hopping mad. I've even been known to walk all the way to the mailbox on days that the golf cart is out of gas. You can just look at how far the TV is from the refrigerator on the back porch where we keep the beer and see that certainly Clark is getting enough exercise! Buford should be able to easily burn off his excess calories (the ones he gets from the scraps of food he finds when he helps recycle the kitchen garbage can every day... something he does with firm dedication, ignoring those uncomfortable coffee grounds and eggshells beneath his feet) with his ferocious attacks through the French doors when our neighborhood stray trots through our yard. Reaching those decibels of sound really takes caloric energy, to say nothing of what it takes to occasionally chase Pete's cat, Merlin, up a tree.

I can't figure out anything else that could be causing the problem. So, until we get through with our exhaustive research to eliminate all the other possibilities (does anyone know how many calories are in a lung-full of air?) y'all are welcome to come visit us here on the farm anytime, just... don't drink the water.