Wanderings of an Elusive Mind

At Wanderings on WordPress.

Two weeks and this site will be gone; please sign up to follow me at WordPress!

Turned out that wasn’t so hard after all. I really haven’t found any limitations being on WordPress.com, then discovered that my website had not already renewed as I thought it had. So, February 7th, this website will disappear, and I will be posting only at WordPress. At that site, within the right-hand column, you’ll find the options of subscribing by email (thus being notified by email when a new post is up), or by RSS feed, if you prefer to read your blogs in an reader, such as Google Reader, which is what I do. I hope you’ll all follow me there.

In the meantime, I have not found a way to export the posts to the new blog, so I’m busily copying and pasting the ones I wish to save into Word, and will publish it for myself as a PDF file ultimately. Why, I’m not certain, other than maybe one day I’ll want to look back and see where I was in life in 2010 and 2011.

I wish you all enough, as I sit here watching the trees wave in the wind and the occasional flurries of snow that are to turn to rain later in the day.

Now at Wanderings of an Elusive Mind

Yet another post has been uploaded to My WordPress Blog

See this post at Wanderings on WordPress

This new post can be found here: Old Man Winter

decisions, decisions

Life is full of choices and decisions. One gets weary, sometimes, weighing those choices, making those decisions. I am in the midst of doing that now. I will confess, it’s not exactly a life-changing decision, it’s not earth-shaking, it’s not critical. But. Still it’s hard to make up my mind.

For the last two years, this blog has resided on my own website. Using WordPress software, to be sure, but self-hosted. And for the past year, I’ve been debating the value of that. How important is it to be self-hosted? Is it worth the cost? I suspect not. Therefore, although the domain just renewed for another year, I am going to experiment. I have set up my WordPress-hosted site for Wanderings of an Elusive Mind, and to assist in making the determination – to keep my website or not to keep my website – I will be posting on the WordPress site. I will put a post on this site with a link, for those of you who are subscribed by email, or RSS for that matter, to simplify until my final decision is made.

In that light, I have just posted at: http://cjvl.wordpress.com/

This really should not be that tough, right? Maybe it’s the ones that aren’t terribly important that are the hardest to make.

I am almost ready – for winter. Almost. Not completely. Not yet. It’s a strange year, all over the country, but the midwest has now gotten snow and cold more normal for them in the winter. Those of us in the northwest are waiting, wondering. What is going on? I’m not complaining, not yet. But I am concerned. If we don’t start getting some wet stuff, whether it be rain or snow, we’re going to have problems in the summer. I could be happy with rain, but then again maybe one good snowfall would be nice.

Normally we have at least this:

A Little Bit

This is not a lot, but we often have several of these little snowfalls. At least this. Not this year. Well, I lie, a wee bit. We did have one of two of these, I think. It’s hard to remember, it seems so long ago.

More often, we have this:

More Normal

At least a few times during the winter. Not this year.

And sometimes we get this:

Now That's Snow!

Some years more often than others. This year? Nada. Nothing. Not at all.

I confess it makes it much easier to get around, to make our trips to the “big town” south of us. I’m basic chicken when it comes to driving in slippery. I do it, but I don’t like it. I’ve always kind of thought it would be nice if the snow would just avoid the highways, the main roads. I don’t mind it on our little road. I just don’t like it on roads that I have to deal with other vehicles and drivers. I really don’t want to get in their way, or to have them get in mine.

So the good news is, driving is easy. The bad news is, I’m not completely happy with changes, especially big changes. Especially big changes in weather, when we read so much about the ecological damages, the warming trends. And the depletion of our water supplies. The draining of the aquifers. There is little agreement on the seriousness of the situation, but then it seems there is little agreement about much of anything anymore.

So, it comes to this: We don’t have to go to town until next Thursday. Now would be a good time for a big snow. Tonight would be just fine. Then I can look out my windows and say “how pretty it is”, I can take pictures, the girls can go play to their hearts’ content – although I suspect Lily would consider large amounts of snow unfavorable – we can worry less about water for the summer. Inundate the mountain areas, make our area wintery, then get the roads cleared and the ice melted off by Thursday.

Not that I want much, you know. Just everything, and my way.

Earlier this week, Angelia of Living, Loving, Laughing posted about unplugging for 24 hours. I was feeling quite smug as I started to comment, thinking “how silly all of this is – after all, I do a lot of things each day, not all connected to the internet”. Then, as I typed my comment, I realized how unjustified I was in feeling smug. Embarrassed that I was feeling smug. Obviously not recognizing reality – and I mean real reality, not the television show variety.

Here’s what I recognized as I commented:

the day starts

Yep. The day starts with coffee in the morning room. And my iPad. On which I catch up with news headlines, Facebook, read my blogs on Flipbook, check out celebrity news on Flipbook (because I’ve regressed to my teenage years again and love the mindless reading of celebrity gossip), check email.

moving on

My phone rings. My cell phone because we dumped our landline. I have a new text message, which of course I must answer. It’s important to keep the lines of communication open. Text communication, typing words, reading words. Actual contact? Like, in speaking with people? Oh my! So 12 seconds ago!

time to post

The day progresses, and it’s time to upload some pictures, post to my blog. More important stuff, more communication. I’m connected!

my book

It’s lunchtime now and since I was a kid I’ve liked to read when I eat my lunch. So I retire to my chair with my lunch and my book. Except the book is not paper. Good grief! So 12 seconds ago! The book is on my Nook. My electronic Nook. My doesn’t-weigh-as-much-as-a-book, easier-to-carry-with-me Nook.

maybe some music?

Ahhh, full tummy, heavy eyes. Perhaps a little nap. Perhaps some music with my nap. That sounds like a perfect way to spend half an hour or so. See, one of the great things about getting older is you can get away with napping. No one criticizes, because everyone knows old people need naps. The music is, of course, mp3 format, on my phone. But that’s just fine, because we have always required some type of electronic or electric device to hear music. Unless you happen to live with a musician.

evening relaxation

Dinner’s done now, dishes are cleaned up. Time for a little knitting. With a little TV to accompany the knitting. The knitting, at least, does not require electronics. Unless the fact that I download the patterns via my computer, and print them out on the printer that is attached to the computer counts. Nah, that shouldn’t be marks against me, should it?

Then there are the other little things like when we travel and I’m looking for accommodations, wireless internet is a necessity. Even when we stayed in KOA cabins on our trip back east a few years ago, wireless internet was available. I made sure of that. When I pack to travel, I have a plastic bag full of chargers for various devices; the desktop computer is obviously too large to pack, and the iPad does have some limitations (but oh my, how wonderful it is for the things it does – read a magazine on one, the images are so much sharper than on paper), so the netbook (not pictured) comes with me. And everything mentioned above, except the desktop. With chargers.

So you see, I am not entitled to smugness. I confess to being electronically tethered to the world. And I like it.

Husband’s treatment yesterday extended into several hours as these things sometimes do, which gave me time to come up with some thoughts. Lest you think I’m about to spout words prophetic, wise, intelligent or even somewhat worth remembering, let me tell you that is just not so. Inane is more likely the appropriate description. No pictures to accompany these words, since I simply (perfectly describing the state of mind) did not think to take any.

My first round of business was to do a bit of shopping; a few groceries, wandering into the depths of Walmart (whereas my mind did not go deep) to see what I could see and what might tempt me beyond endurance. From that experience I learned:

1. It’s best to avoid going anywhere near the pharmacy. That is the area of perpetual traffic jams.

2. Someone is certain to park their cart right in front of the section containing the category of greeting cards that I need.

3. When I say “excuse me” that someone will move their cart and apologize profusely. That’s because I live in an area where life is slow enough that not everyone has to be first and people can be nice.

4. It is possible for me to go through the yarn section and not buy anything. Pick up, caress, drool – yes. Buy – no.

5. Okay, okay! If you’re going to demand honesty, I did pick up 2 skeins of this particular shades-of-blue-with-touches-of-sienna-fuchsia-passes-the-soft-test yarn, but two aisles later common sense took over and I put it back.

6. It is not possible for me to go through the yarn section without buying/nearly buying some. This applies to any store I visit that carries yarn.

7. Buying groceries requires complete concentration/obliviousness. It also requires a strong belief that our carts take up no space at all, which allows us to leave them willy-nilly in the aisle because they cannot actually prevent people from getting through. Can they?

8. Grocery stores will stock an amazing quantity of items in an amazing quantity of sizes/prices, but no one store will carry the precise brand/size that I want in at least two of those items. I think this is a rule. This creates opportunities to spend additional time visiting multiple stores. It might have something to do with fair trade laws, I’m not certain. I am certain that for people like me that are not huge fans of shopping (in person – online is a whole ‘nother thing) there is nothing fair or fun about it.

That responsibility taken care of, I was off to Burger King to pick up some lunch. Burger King was the choice because it’s near the treatment center, I had coupons, it’s fast, easy and relatively inexpensive, especially with coupons. Husband and I ate lunch together, in the perfect setting – the chemo treatment room. A room filled with people like husband, sitting in recliners, connected via tubes to machines pumping poisons into their bodies. Perfect setting, yes?

After lunch, I retired to the waiting room, where I learned:

1. Having an iPad gains you a lot of attention, because people are curious and want to see and touch.

2. Lots of chemo nurses play Angry Birds and do it better than I do. That is partly because I’m not very good at games like that.

3. When you sit for too long in a chair with support only halfway up your back, iPad on lap, looking down, tensing up because you can’t get those angry little birds to do what you want them to, you get a stiff neck.

I have now shared with you all of those important things I learned yesterday. I bid you go forth and spread the wisdom.