Ever Inventive

Despite the 107-degree temperatures, our plants are thriving.

They should be. Fiorella and husband devote an hour very evening to caring for them-- and considerable ingenuity. She's told you about using plastic milk bottles, but the delivery systems have been adjusted too. The harness holding the milk bottles as they descend from the second-floor landing to the first floor dining room has been simplified to a loop on the end of the rope, and every bottle is capped to avoid accidentally washing the said dining room's floor. And Husband is, as of Monday morning, hooking the bath water hose up to a sprinkler. After all, it's agua usada so drought watering restrictions (hand-held hoses only) don't apply.

Humans, ever inventive. No wonder we trumped the Neanderthals.

Skin

In olden times, ladies covered up when the sun was out--broad-brimmed hats, high necks, long sleeves, even gloves. All of which were discarded in the golden days of tanning, skin cancer, and premature aging.

What goes around comes around. Fio now pulls on gloves when she drives, especially on the left hand, which has already developed two and a half brown spots. And she wears longer sleeves and buttons her blouses to the top.

Oh, for a poke bonnet.

Hither and Thither

Fiorella is going to complain today because her "day of rest" isn't. She's scheduled from dawn to dusk, which is falling about 8:00 these days.

This morning she will hem her new slacks and, while she has the sewing basket out, add more weights to the yard flags to keep them from winding up and around their poles. She'll also spend an hour finishing up tax preparation and set her hair so she looks decent for when she and Husband make the forty-five minute drive into town for a birthday lunch with Nephew Aaron. While there, they'll mail the monthly payments Fio forgot about yesterday.

Then home again, with corrections from Friend Joan waiting to be inserted into one of Fio's manuscripts. And somewhere along the line, Fio needs to work on rewriting the first hundred pages of another story which an editor has requested from her.

In late afternoon, Fio is driving BACK into town for a reunion with some old college friends. When she gets home, she'd better get a start on her latest front-room project before Husband relegates those carefully-chosen slats of wood to the garage.

Pant, pant, pant. Fio likes to be busy, but today is too much.

Withdrawal

Fio is writing this blog on Sunday because she doesn't know if she'll get her laptop back on Monday like she's supposed to, and she wants to be prepared. It was murder getting a blog up for Saturday, but Husband's computer savvy saved the day.

Fiorella is terribly embarrassed: without even realizing what was happening, she, a sworn Luddite, had embraced the world of technology. She's lost without her laptop. Her world has stopped turning. She's had to get up off the couch and do physical labor. She's filled a little tablet full of notes that otherwise she would have entered into the "back story" file of her work in progress. She's watched TV.

And she's gone crazy.

Written While Shoveling Gravel into Driveway Crevices

Fio believes in water. It relieves thirst. It helps one lose weight and one's system to work well. It washes off dirt and sweat. It soothes, whether in a hot water bottle or a bath tub. It participates in soup, tea, coffee, and lemonade. Vegetables boil in it. It feeds crops, flowers, and grass.

But she doesn't want it ever again to rut out her driveway.

AAAAAARGH!

Fio is upset because the laptop keeps telling her that her security system has lapsed, which the idiot machine refuses to realize doesn't matter since husband installed a better system last week. And because she's been working like a dog on rewriting an old story and doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. And because her laser salon closed down on her without warning and she's afraid the refund isn't going to cover finishing up her legs and armpits at another place. And because the driveway still looks like it was ravaged by an earthquake. And because she lost her sunglasses again. And because the landscapers dyed the concrete slab in front of the house dark red instead of brown. And because she ate an eight-ounce bag of Swedish Fish for lunch. And because Blue Cross keeps paying less and charging more. And because husband left the pantry door open and Wendy Dog ate half a loaf of bread and an English muffin. And because of everything else that is going wrong with her life.

Uhm--just got an e-mail from Friend Kathryn that she found my sunglasses in my car. Maybe everything else will work out too.

Breadcrumbs

Fiorella has left a trail of lipsticks, eyeglasses, and umbrellas everywhere she goes. The strange thing is that she's also the person Husband turns to for help whenever he's misplaced something--and she usually finds it.

But not her own stuff. She still mourns her little yellow, duck-handled umbrella, the Crayola one, and the bright red foldable. As for glasses, she swears they get swallowed up whenever she visits HEB (the sunglasses especially). Sometimes the lipsticks reappear as melted masses under the seat of her car, but mostly, they just disappear.

She can only hope that whoever finds her treasures will get good use from them.

Light at End of the Tunnel

The IRS stuff is slowly trickling in so Fio has fond hopes of not being hauled into court or formally audited. The septic people came out on Tuesday and pumped the tanks, then will return later to rewire the aerator. The AC repairman has promised to show up today. The computer people recorded Fio's life's work on an external drive which she will try to attach to this old, life-support laptop she is using. Her "new" computer is in the mail to the factory.

All it took was three days on the phone and driving around like a maniac, then writing check after check after check.

Continuing Electronic Tragedy

Fiorella has a friend whose husband, realizing his wife had become addicted to daytime television, pulled the plug. Apparently, God, realizing Fio had become addicted to her laptop, did the same.

Yes, the motherboard is fried. I know that Fio told you one of her superpowers was to screw up any electronics she encountered, but she didn't realize she was quite this powerful.

Oh well, haul out the old pen and paper.

Out of Touch

Fiorella is a creature of deliberate habits. She builds routines so she can save her active brain for more important things. Thus she arises early and takes a little gray pill, combs her hair, and brushes her teeth, the goes downstairs to read the newspaper and open up her laptop. Otherwise, dawn will not come.

Her blog is usually pre-written, sometimes a week in advance, but often she writes just after she gets downstairs--like today. On Wednesday, though, all the computers were off-line. Husband checked out every connection in the house and Fio called the server, but there was no respite--at last, God had turned off the electricity.

It was a bad scene. The telephones had been out for three days previous, with Verizon insisting the culprit was us and us insisting it was Verizon. Husband again checked all connections, and they were sound. Mysteriously, power was restored Wednesday morning--yes, just before the internet torpedoed.

All of this threw Fio for a loop. Sure, she could take her pill, brush her teeth, and comb her hair, but her communications were shot. No Fiorella Plum.

And that's what Fio saves her inventiveness for.

Travails of Fiorella

As Fiorella left yesterday afternoon, she assured Husband she'd be home by 9:30, 10:00 at the latest, and tucked into bed by 10:30. Little did she know

Hopping into her darling baby car, she drove off to Target, where she bought a birthday card for Friend Ellen and met up with Friend Elaine, who was giving her a ride the rest of the way to the RWA meeting. The meeting got started a little past its usual time because of late arrivals, and it ran over because the presentation was especially interesting. Afterwards, Friend Elaine needed to make a twenty-minute side trip, and when Fio picked up her car again in the Target parking lot, she realized she would have to take an extra ten minutes to go mail Friend Ellen's BD card immediately because it would be past due anyway. Finally she arrived home, dead tired but still keyed up, at about 10:40.

How great to be home, to be able to relax for a while before trudging upstairs for bath and bed.

Then she stepped in some leftover from Wendy Dog's early morning gastrointestinal disturbance that she hadn't spotted before. Another twenty minutes cleaning various spots of it off the rug.

Then, checking her e-mail one last time before she turned off the lights and turned on the security alarm, she discovered that she'd messed up on her entry to Heart of the Rockies writing contest. She'd have to fix that, but not tonight.

Finally--up the stairs, turn on the bath, and settle down for a relaxing soak. Ah, that was enough water in the tub. She reached for the hot water faucet.

It came off in her hand.

Safeguards

Fio is concerned about the safety of people who live in houses wide-open open to nature. There's a reason walls and doors were invented. Nature is indiscriminate. Nature includes sidewinders and rabid raccoons and black-widow spiders and passing strangers who see an easy target.

Fio herself prefers doors, locks, and an alarm system. And a big dog.

Empty Churches

Church attendance has dropped over the past several of decades. Perhaps it reflects the increasing number of women in the workforce.

When women were primarily homemakers, church was a major social outlet. Now maybe women have so much social interaction at the office that they want to stay home when they can.

Just a theory.

Hair Today

Has Fio told you she's having her leg hair lasered off? At last she can wear shorts without worrying that she's got a mane down the back of each leg.

Yes, our girl comes from a long line of clean-shaven men and mustachioed women. If grave goods were part of our culture, her mother would have gone to her final resting place with tweezers in one hand and a magnifying mirror in the other.

Fio reassures you that the leg-lasering is relatively painless.

Of course, the armpits may be different story.

Raptors Strike Again

Fiorella, lazy child of nature, usually depends on the rain to wash her darling baby car, but she had to take the hose and a wad of paper towels to it Thursday after she got home from Austin. Yes, while she was yukking it up with Friend Paula inside Dan's Hamburgers (Fio's exclusive social gathering place), some foul fowls bombed her little Miata so thoroughly it looked polka-dotted.

And she'd been so pleased with herself for snagging a parking spot in the shade.

She Strikes Again!

Fiorella has often apologized for the fact that she is electronically challenged. But say it loud, say it proud--it isn't a DISABILITY, it's a SUPERPOWER!

And she demonstrated it again the other day at HEB, when paying for spicy chicken wings at the buffet counter. The clerk ran her credit card, but no receipt emerged. He was forced to write a receipt by hand so she could get out of the store without being nabbed for shoplifting.

Maybe Fiorella's secret supername should be LuddLady.

Telephone Tip

Fiorella learned something recently that she has to pass on.

While some workmen were using an air hammer upstairs to shore up the boxroom insulation, Fio was on the phone trying to work her way through the standard maze of instructions to get to a human being at a credit card company . The phone voice asked a mechanical question, and Fio attempted to answer, but was interrupted by the machine gun cadence of the air hammer. Apparently unnerved by the rat-a-tat-tat, the automatic phone immediately connected her to a real live person.

So the next time you want to bypass an endless list of choices, shout BAM BAM BAM into the phone and see what happens.

Comfort Food

When my mother died, we were overwhelmed with visitors and food. Little old men my father had worked with years ago tottered up the front walk bearing casseroles and sat with with father for a while and talked about their "prostrates." And neighbors brought over cakes and molded gelatin. Fried chicken poured in by the bucketful. It was nice, both because of the love and the practicality. Father and Brother and I were simply too shell-shocked and to arrange for our own meals.

Now my father has died and no one brought us food. Husband and I don't live in a tight little neighborhood like my parents did. My best friends are thirty-five miles away in Austin, and it would be awkward to call them and say, "Hi, how are you? My dad just died. Bring food."

So Daughter-in-law and I troop out every day and pick up a few things we think everyone might eat, usually deli stuff, because nobody feels like cooking. Cooking is for happy occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas, not for deaths and funerals. But cooking or not, our household has swollen in size and everyone needs to eat--Husband and I, Older Son and his wife, Younger Son, sometimes Daughter. But no fried chicken is forthcoming.

Welcome to modern living.

Oversupplied

About six weeks ago a notice popped up on Fiorella's computer screen that her print drum was about to go out. She promptly ordered a new one from Dell, scared to death that the old one would give up the ghost before the replacement arrived on the scene. But, whew, it didn't.

Then a notice popped up that her ink cartridge was about to run dry, so she whipped out the ol' credit card and ordered a new cartridge from Dell, which arrived within a week.

Both of the boxes are still stacked on the floor under the computer table. Yes, despite, Fio's usual heavy usage, the old drum is still rolling strong and the old cartridge has yet to gray out.

On the other hand, Dell's financial figures are looking better.

As Go the Boomers . . . .

Viagra and Cialis, facelifts and anti-aging creams, new treatments for Alzheimer's and familial tremor, hearing aid shops on every corner, older admen on TV, older lovers on TV . . . .

The baby boomers still dominate the national scene.