Category: you gotta love life

The Power to Help.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I have two ants safely harbored in a peanut butter jar, a piece of screen keeping them inside.  They came here inside my husband’s lunchbox from the construction site.  Of course, they didn’t come on purpose.  They weren’t particularly interested in visiting places far, far away.  They were after goodies and got hijacked by the lid being closed and zippered shut.  So home they came…surviving what had to be a very dangerous and uncomfortable trip, jostled between empty lunch containers, locked inside a plastic and nylon environment in 100 degree heat. 

So hubs opens lunch box to dump his containers into the sink and does the old, “Ants! Oh, great.”

Now, I have a “thing” about ants.  It’s the one creature…en masse…which will send me screaming off in a frothing panic. (I was bitten by red ants when I was a child and have never quite recovered from the experience.)  But I also have a “thing” about life and its being precious.  I have a “thing” which demands me respect all life…and non-life.  And, me, a human, has the power to help.  And that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?  If I have the power to help, doesn’t that obligate me to help where I can, when I can?  I think so.  Caring matters.  If one doesn’t care, if things don’t matter, what’s the point?

So back to the story.

So, lid open, one of the two ants trapped inside started perambulating around in a bit of a frenzy.  One got outside the box and disappeared.  The other was just doing laps inside. 

I see all manner of containers, but everything is plastic or styrofoam — death to insects put inside because they are saturated with things like pesticides or made using formaldehyde. (Nice to think that our food comes in these things, right?) Quickly, I grab the clean, empty, glass peanut butter jar, wondering where the “outside” ant went off to, and how I would be able to find her to get her safely inside the jar for the return trip home tomorrow.  Ah!  There she is!  I manage to get her to walk inside the jar.  Now for the other one.  She’s not so easy, but, with the help of a piece of paper towel, she’s induced to take a ride inside safety.

Screen lid anchored in place, and they are ready to roll, no longer “lost ants,” but simply on an adventure and ready for the return trip home.

I used my power to help. 

BELATED ANT UPDATE:

Yes, they made it safely back to their ant homes.  Hubs was very conscientious about getting them back to exactly where he ate lunch the day before.  And he watched them as they made tracks out of the jar and onto “familiar ground.”  They immediately ran into more ants, did the “feeler thing,” as he called it, then made tracks, following other ants headed to a “known ant home.” 

I really like the construction crew.  They are very conscientious.  All of them.  And that’s as it should be since the two owners, Hubs and partner, are both eco-minded.  If the crew wasn’t, I guess they wouldn’t be crew very long, right?

Oh, and, I failed to mention, I put a bit of water on aforementioned paper towel the morning of transport back home, and both ants made quite an elaborate show of drinking.  Those were some thirsty ants.  They must have snacked on some of hubby’s favorite Triscuits! 

A Sony Friday; a Sony Saturday, too.  *Sigh*

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Husband gets wild hair.  Let’s put all the CDs inside a stereo unit.  In fact, let’s get two or three of these things and put the stuff we mostly listen to on them.

Ah, honey?  Let’s try one.  First.  If it works, we’ll think about running them in series.  Okay?

Awwwww.   Yeah.  Okay.  You’re probably right.

I roll eyes.  He gets so enthusiastic, then, when you suggest just a tad bit of self-restraint, it’s like you dashed cold water on him.  But he dries off fast.  Good thing.

But.  This is going to be a P-R-O-J-E-C-T.  With a super capital P.

Hubs BUYS Sony CDP-CX445.  It arrives, 2nd day air UPS.  I groan when I see, then HEFT, the box.

Okaaaaaay, I think, brace yourself, knowing that means that I’m going to spend all night, all day, all night, all day again, and probably another all day, helping.  There goes the weekend!

He’s so excited when he hears it actually got here.  On time.  In Podunk, Idaho, no less.  He races home.  He unpacks it.  He pulls 400 CD’s, stashing the jewel cases in a box. He dumps the Styrofoam packing into the garbage.  He hasn’t yet broken the box down, though, and I have to keep walking around it to help him when he smartly commands, “Hand me that wire.  Hand me that flashlight.  Hold this.”

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

He’s in bliss.

So I finally crash.  He stays up till 4AM loading the CD’s into it.  Morning comes.  He’s out of bed in a flash, four hours earlier than usual. 

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

“Will you type the artists, album names, and slot numbers for me into an Excel spreadsheet?”

Right.  “Okay,” I say, hoping it will only take maybe an hour to do.  I mean 400 slots is a piece of cake to type.  Should only take a little bit of time, right?  Because how bad can a piece of electronics slow something down. 

HINT: It takes almost a full minute for the machine to read the Artist and Album label because it first has to laboriously load the CD, taste it, think about it, then decide if it wants to show you the answer.  (I start twitching after the first five.  I’ll be a basket case after fifty, never mind you might as well call the men in white coats after the full four-hundred.)

We start doing a comedy show to ease the pain as he presses next and I wait patiently like dutiful wife, fingers hovering over keys.

…We get through 200 of them…in two hours.  I’m about buggy.  And…and…and…we’re halfway through.  He does a rah-rah arm pump.  I just want to GET DONE.  “And 201?” I ask.

“It’s not reading it,” says he, which means he has to hit play so we can listen to it to identify artist/album.  And….

THE MACHINE IS SKIPPING.

We check again.  Nope, disc is fine.  Change the CD to somewhere else.  Nope, disc is fine.  Load something else into slot 201.  Skips.  Ummmm.  Go backwards and forwards from 200.  Skip.  Stops skipping when it is at 189.  Everything back of 189 is fine.  Everything forward of 189 skips.

Now what?

Call electronic stores.

Call everybody.

And….

I-Pod. 

No. Not. Never.

And….

…And he’s still researching “another solution.”

So, what are we going to be doing?  Tearing this entire house apart again, laboriously loading CD’s back into their jewel cases, and….

And…I don’t know.

I think I’ll put on some Dokken on the five CD changer and try to ease my migraine.

…I HATE Sony.  Have since they started that proprietary nonsense.  Then they started that invasive crap.  Sony = contemptible.  And their electronics SUX a bad egg.

Yesterday was, in a Word, Interesting.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Yesterday proved one of those days of constant surprises.  It started with a site update that turned into a flurry of wannabe clients using the new forms to inundate me with crazy requests.  Next was the loss of a purse by an elderly neighbor who begged my help. (Found the purse, no problem, and, no, she shouldn’t scold herself.  For heaven’s sake, I forget where I lay my keys three seconds after laying them down.  Wish you could “call” keys like you do a lost cell so you could track them down.)  Then came the call that a little boy very near and dear to us almost choked to death.  Next was the pissed off nineteen-year-old little brother.  There was the student in need of advisement.  And last but not least was this very odd email wanting to know how much I’d sell zentao.com for.   Very suspicious, this last, because the emailer claims his name is John Y Chu, suspiciously close to author, prankster, and friend John Chew.   And of course there’s Dr. Mononculous and the Million Writers Award race. 

I didn’t get much scratched off my to-do list, I went to bed when I usually get up, and got up this morning five hours later than usual to lukewarm coffee.  Still need to make fresh…which is where I’m off to now.  Then it’s back at the list.

Oh, the boys got that 85k+ job — congrats, all.  Good job.  Now to build it.  *grin* 

Now for the FUN stuff!

Posted on by D. L. Keur

That’s right, I said “Fun.”

I’ve always wanted to create a visual conundrum.  I lace them into my art, but I want to stir trouble in your brain cells.  I want synapses snapping and snarling at one another as they worry themselves dizzy. 

Yep, I’m plotting FUN on this website — stuff to keep you cussing at me and dying to know “The Answer.”  Maybe I won’t do a good enough job.  Maybe you’ll all figure it out in a gnat’s blink.  We’ll see.  That’s the challenge — me against “y’all.”  *snicker, smirk, grin*