MARCH~~~
March 21,1999 - It dawns on me that I have forgotten about charm squares tomorrow. I have to take off to Wally World to see what materials they have to offer on such a short notice. Leaving there I go by Bojangle's and get Mother a country ham biscuit and hot coffee. When I take it to her she eats all of the biscuit and drinks most of the coffee. I have to leave her and get back home in time to watch Giggles once again while her Mom works on yet another paper…
Wes has really had his patience tested my me these past two days. So far, I am still not out of the doghouse…. I decided to swap all the C drive on the computer over to the F drive and have less for him to do when he came in to take out the old hard drive. Being tired Friday evening, (Yes, I have to have some sort of excuse for being such a lame brain!) I just went ahead and deleted the programs that I had switched over. It was when I touched the button to reset that it dawned on me what I had done!! I forgot to redesignate the C drive. Poor Wes tried every way he could to try to undo what I did. There is one thing to be said about the situation - when I decide to mess up, I mess up good!
Now the computer is unhooked from its life support lines and waits to be taken in to the computer doctor. According to Cotton, they will have to take out my new hard drive, hook it up to another computer and copy the programs, rename it C drive and then reboot my computer. Hopefully, I will not lose any of the materials that are stored on it now.
I have a back up, but it is not on the new zip file. It is on the old backup system that we took out when we were redoing it. While doing this they can also check out the old hard drive to determine if indeed it is bad and at the same time make the new hard drive my master hard drive. It I keep the old hard drive it will become the slave drive for the children to use. That is the one thing that is - or will be- affected. The children will lose their games again. We will have to use their drive for the new one. At least that is something that we can replace fairly easily. I have already been instructed that I am not to delete anything without first checking with you-know-who!
March 22,1999 - Mrs. Tbird really had her day planned and a lot of territory to cover, but came through like the pro she is. She arrived bright and early, gathered some daffodils to mix with the yellow bells that Ms. Jay brought over earlier with the tea for our luncheon, packed up her Suburban with everything (including my sick computer), and we headed off for Morganton about 9:15. She dropped off the computer to be worked on first, then a quick stop at a grocery store for some cookies and ice for Ms. Jay's dessert, and took time to feed Giggles before having to pitch in and help with the luncheon. We took turns with Giggles while getting things ready. It was so wonderful having her to help out. It ended up that Ms. Jay had a cast put on her ankle and didn't make the meeting at all.
Our other hostess from Lenoir had to work and sent over her casserole by her husband for me to bring. As it turned out, even with Tbird's help, there were only three of us to take care of everything. I had the opportunity of letting Giggles be my "show and tell" for the day.
Checking back on the computer before leaving Morganton, the computer was not ready and there were questions to be answered about it. When I got home there was yet another call for more information and the need for me to bring over the backup system we had taken out earlier - since I had not made a new zip backup yet. They promised the computer would be ready for us in the morning. Wes has to go to Marion, so I will just have him stop off as he comes through Morganton and pick it up for me. He has to connect all those strange wires back to their correct places before I can do anything anyway.
March 23,1999 - Ms. Jay has the cast on her right ankle and can't drive. I offer to take her by the doctor's office this morning to get her ankle checked. I run and do a few errands while she gets checked out. Tbird wanted me to stop at the Jewelry Store and pick up some baby clothes from her friend there.
After picking up Ms. Jay, we head back to the jewelry store where I take time to leave my Mother's ring to have more birthstones added to it. I had it designed with four larger birthstones for my four children and had added three smaller sizes for my three grandsons on the sides. It was definitely time to add more! While it is being worked on, I also am adding my step-granddaughter, our foster baby (it is the only child that they will ever have) and a place for the set for yet another! Yes! Daughter, Cotton, is expecting! We all just hope and pray that all will go well with this one. We are all excited.
Wes calls. He has my computer, but it is in Marion. His day got turned around and he had to pick it up on the way up. It will be around 8 PM before he will be back with it. It turns out that I finally get booted up; reinstalled and on line to check my e-mail by 10 PM! I messed around doing things with it until after 2am and decide to leave the machine defragmenting and go to bed.
March 24,1999 - Why should the simplest of things turn out to be so complicated! My button pushing for correcting as the defragmenting takes place backfires on me. I am down to just the C drive today. I go in to see if I can activated D drive and lock everything up again! Now I am going to have to do some sort of major offering to my son to make up for this error….
I just wonder what it is that he would respond to the best? Fillet Mignon Steak Dinner? New boots? Gas for a month for his truck? Wonder if I can make up to him some way! I finally make the page for him to call so I can break the news…. I need his help again. He is already threatening to add his screen saver back on, "HELP, SOME CRAZY LADY IS TRYING TO DESTROY ME!!" He used it when I was first starting out and we got a good laugh out of it then. His mother-in-law is getting a new computer. With any luck maybe she can take some of my errors for her own, and I won't look as bad…..
Allan calls from work to say that he has found me a '93 four-door Explorer. He has been looking around for something for me for awhile. My Blazer is great. I love the size for my jaunts and ease of getting in and out on my joints. The fact that it is a two-door model with only four seat belts has its drawbacks at times. We had found a four-door Blazer, but it had a few questionable problems. (With the computer on the blink, I have time to check it out.)
March 25,1999 - Tbird calls to say she will be in Morganton for picture-taking with Giggles this morning before coming over to do more work on her Nationals. That is convenient for me! I have her to go by and pick up the Explorer for me to try out while she is there. Then I call and make arrangements for it to be ready when she goes by. As it turns out there is a 94 available for me to try today. It has been a local, one owner vehicle trade in on a newer model. It has less mileage than the other one as well. I get excited looking for it to come and wondering what it will be like and if it may be the one I need.
Tbird arrives with a dark blue Explorer. I like what I see. We drive it to Hudson for lunch together, and then drive up to Lenoir for Wes to see it during his lunch time. He suggests I make plans to keep it for several days to give him and Allan time to check it out for me. From there, I drive Tbird back to Morganton to pick up her car left at the dealership and made arrangements to keep the "new' one a few days. It is mid afternoon before she gets down to work on her papers while I watch Giggles. She ends up working until late to get done with another of her papers. Her time is fast running out and she has an urgency to get it all finished and in the mail. I do sit with her as she critiques her videos of lessons taught earlier in the year. They have to be included with the papers.
March 26,1999 - This morning was supposed to begin with snow after our 70 degrees yesterday. It is cooler, but no snow. Later in the day the forecast is changed to call for three inches in the mountains tonight. The front has slowed down. We have light rain off and on throughout the day. Ms. Jay and I go to Wally World this morning to get some materials for our quilt session coming up on Wednesday. Before we leave, Wes comes in long enough to look at the computer and decide that he will have to call for more information before getting anything done. He leaves BingoKid with Allan for the day since his year-round school is off for a break now.
Ms. Jay and I try out the Explorer for our needs as we go to Wally World, the grocery store and bank, etc. It works well for us. I get to watch as Ms. Jay uses one of the electric carts in the store since she has the cast on her ankle. (I always chose to walk through the stores for the exercise since the floors are level when I go shopping - and I have the cart to push.) I get back home just in time for a friend to come by and visit for awhile. Tbird arrives while she is visiting and she gets to see my new granddaughter.
An old Chronic Pain Clinic pal was at Wally World this morning, too. We joked about the two of us both having to use the canes. Neither of us have over come the pain throughout the past ten years. But we could laugh and joke together. Life goes on for us. We are both survivors. We have both learned to live with what we have and be thankful for the mobility we still enjoy. Neither of us are ready to give in and let the pain win. That is the whole message of the clinic we shared. In spite of pain, life goes on and one must be able to perform without letting others know the level of pain that could be there if you happen to do the wrong movement. More importantly, was learning to do things within the limits of our individual range of motion and live as normally as possible. Some of us were not lucky enough to be able to return to a productive life of working daily as we once had.
Wes comes by and takes the Explorer to have our mechanic check it out. He thinks it will be a good purchase, so I call the Credit Union and make an appointment for early Monday morning. I will sell the Blazer later…. Meanwhile, the computer is not being cooperative with us at all. It has frozen again and we can't get past the first Window's pic. Wes has about met his limit fooling around with it. I shall just wait until Monday and take it back to the shop and let them do whatever has to be done to make it work properly for me once again. I am ready to loose everything on it now and begin anew. Enough time and energy has been lost over the past few weeks trying to make the computer work the way it has in the past.
March 27,1999 - A little of this and a little of that and not much of anything at all and most of the day is gone. I did sit and watch the squirrels jumping from tree to tree chasing and playing again this morning. It is getting to be a regular early morning ritual. There are the squirrels -some mornings two, other mornings there may be five or six - the crows join in some as well. One of the squirrels will jump toward a crow and make it fly off. The robins are there, and at times the rabbits will dart across the grass. I haven't seen a chipmunk lately. There used to be several of them playing around the yard.
While I was checking up on Mother and spending some time with her, her sister called and was talking of wanting to go to the church tonight to hear the combined church choirs do the Easter Cantata. They are at Hickory tonight and will be at the Morganton Church tomorrow night. I offer to come by and pick her up to go along with her. It has been a long time since I have been to the church. This should be a short service so I go. It is so good to be there in the sanctuary again. The music is all that I expected it to be. There are so many people there that I do not know. There are many there that I have known for years, they barely speak. I don't think that they have even missed me. Only a very few took a moment to speak. It is hard to know what to feel or how to react.
As Thomas Wolfe once wrote, 'You can't go home again." Is that true of church, too? Does the time come when it is best to move ahead into a new generation, another group, another church? Perchance it really is my time for a change… a place that I can find some sort of activity, a way to share and become a part of the whole…. I no longer have to offer to my Hickory church what they need of me. I have become one of the older books that has been pushed back on the shelf to gather dust as it looks on at the young and newer editions.
I have to take time to shake my head at myself… I take Mother a steak biscuit and coffee. I get me a tea. My tea spills in the Explorer…. I take my Aunt to get a sandwich after the Cantata and spill my tea as I start to set the tray on the table… twice in one day. I am doing good.
March 28,1999 - On again, off again. Today has been the off again day. I didn't even bother to dress today. It didn't matter; no one came by anyway. I called Wes to see if he wanted to try and retrieve my e-mail off the computer. He did not make it by. I spent the afternoon cutting strips of material getting ready for the quilting class this coming Wednesday. Ten different light colors and ten different dark colors; I am short on the light ones. Not to worry, I will pick them up tomorrow. I have bunches of smaller strips that I am adding into my stash.
We will be making a scrappy log cabin quilt and are going to be swapping different strips with each other so that we will have over two hundred different fabrics once we begin to stitch our blocks together. I get most of my strips cut and my center squares ready to go.
March 29,1999 - Today was supposed to be partly cloudy and warm (in the seventies.) I woke up to rain and pain. Those words have to rhyme for a reason. I mess around and don't get to the Credit Union until mid morning, but most everything was done, ready and waiting for me. It's easy to borrow money. It's harder paying it back. When I get back home, I take time to take a Polaroid picture of the back of the computer before Tbird comes to take it loose. I figure with the picture of how it is hooked up, the two of us will be able to reinstall it when I get it back from the shop. This time I take a load of stuff that has been installed on it and plan to have them do what they have to do to get me back online with my computer.
I pick up Ms. Jay to go along with us to Morganton and we set out to make our rounds. First off, the computer is deposited in the capable hands of those that know and understand its language. Next, we stop at the Rag Bag and get some fabrics so that Ms. Jay and I will be ready for our class Wednesday. Then we head to the Dealership to finalize the Explorer Deal. It should not take long. All the major stuff was done in Lenoir…. That was not the case. They changed the Inspection Sticker for me since it ran out in April. That didn't take long. They informed me that it was being washed! That took forever and a day ! We must have spent close to two hours there!
We were all hungry and more than ready to find a place to eat when we left. We stopped at Uptown for a sandwich, took time to check on the computer and then headed home. Tbird had only a short time to spend on her writing once we got back to the house. It is her wish to complete all her writing today and tomorrow. Just hope we get the computer back tomorrow so we can print her papers out.
March 30,1999 - I am determined to get some things done today! First off, I call the doctor's office and make an appointment for the one I missed that was supposed to have been on March 19th and for some strange reason turned out to be on the 12th. (It was a hair appointment on the 19th!) The first available opening is for May 6th. I take it.
Next I have to phone in my prescriptions for refills. Several of them will have to be called in by the pharmaist before being refilled. Two of them are early Y2K problems. They were written for a year from February and the computer listed them for 1999 - the highest year on the computer.... therefore --- no refills allowed. Last month the drugstore got a new updated computer system working, but try explaining to a computer by phone why your prescription will not be taken by phone. I had to take them by the drug store and drop them off.
There is much to do today. I doubt if a lot of it will get done. I do look forward to having a new lady come by to clean house for me this evening. She works at the hospital on third shift and wants to come by here before going on to the hospital. That suits me fine, because I actually have my best time of the day during the late afternoons and evenings.
Staying up is not a problem with me ... sleeping is a problem. I must admit I do sleep better now than I did a year ago, but yet, it leaves a lot to be desired. Lately, I have been sitting by the window early in the morning watching my nature friends scurrying around. Each day the trees are a little greener, more flowers are in bloom, more birds are singing - I enjoy Springtime.
March 31,1999 -Ms. Jay and I are off bright and early to Morganton and our class session on the Scrappy Log Cabin Quilt. We have to take something for lunch so that we can work through and not have to leave the Senior Center to eat. I was up at 6 a.m. to complete my downloading of Netscape to my new hard drive, and then getting the rest of my 1½ inch light strips cut and ready to take with me.
We stop by the Nursing Center so I can get a paper signed for Mother to see a podiatrist when he comes to the center. As it turned out, the nurse has failed to bring the needed document to her room so I could not get it signed. I was fortunate to have Allan come by just as I was getting ready to leave. He took out my sewing machine and supplies I needed for the day and loaded them in the car for me. The day is just begining and I am already given out! I couldn't find my little red wire buggy I usually use to tote my stuff in. As it turned out, I opted to take the Samsonite luggage piece Cotton gave me and it worked perfectly. My little Singer machine just fit on top of the bag against the little handle for pulling. It worked well besides that with the little zip pockets to put things into and my cutting board and supplies fit inside. I pulled it all with just one arm and steadied myself with my cane and the other arm.
It was a long day, but one I enjoyed so very much. It is so exciting to see how we all can take the same strips of material and come out with something different for each of us. We each had our own center block that was not shared with each other like the strips were shared. I chose aqua for my center. Many of the others chose red which is traditional and represents the chimney. The most stunning was those that chose to use yellow! It will be exciting when we get together and discover all the creativity of our works.
By the time I got home ... about five o'clock … exhaustion would be the only way to describe how I felt. I had to get my prescriptions from the drug store. The doctor's office was so busy they did not call in my refills needed until after five yesterday. I drove up to Lenoir to get them before getting out of the car. I knew that once I stopped that would be it… It has been such a long, long day.
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© 1999 by Stormy Jeanne