Changes are in the wind. Some good, some not so much, some to be determined.
First, the dog is slowly getting better. Around the house she's mostly a 4-legged creature now, unless she's in a hurry or just in from outside. Her pills course has finished, and I suppose I can throw out "The Cone" any time I find a reason to reach around behind my chair and pick it up off the floor. Of course when I see it I'm otherwise occupied, and when I'm not, I don't see it to remind me. At least it's doing no harm. Well, unless you call making a prime spot for stopping the drift of dog hair and clumping it doing some harm.
I've been taking over some of the club duties that our outgoing President has apparently abandoned. It's only a matter of a few days now, and she hasn't complained that she's feeling supplanted or pushed aside early or anything. She's also not seeming to be offering advice or much in the way of assistance, as if the mantle passes seamlessly. I have been in the club longer than she has, even on the board longer, and there are times I hold more of the memories of "long ago" events. Several things fell thorough the cracks with the last transition and I'm working on picking up the pieces from those. This new position does have different responsibilities.
For example, a form didn't get filled out last year so a meeting room wasn't reserved for our Board meetings. We've had to cram ourselves into the club's space instead, though the pandemic has pretty much made that a moot point. It's not like the club has been crowded lately. Tuesday however I decided to check with the rec center staff - after finding out who was the right person - to determine whether we are back on that meeting room schedule for use with the new Calendar year. There was good news and bad news. No, not for board meetings. So our outgoing president will be checking it out with the corporation to find out why not. (Assuming she remembers. She also has a busy personal calendar the next couple weeks, including family visiting and jury duty.) But the good news is I now know which of the large meeting rooms we have reserved for our general membership meetings, with potlucks. We have part of a huge room with dividers, and now are given half the space we filled two years ago. We aren't likely to be over-stuffed there with covid still running amok. Between border issues, flying issues, lots of "aging out" where member's have to return to their "summer" states with a spouse who needs constant care and thus extended family around, the club attendance is still fairly low. One couple from the UK has the added issue of being allowed even less time here, and now needing a negative covid test the day before they fly. Not all places both have tests available for everybody and can get results back that quickly, not to mention that not being Americans, they have to pay for their own tests. No insurance coverage over here. We hope they can return here in a couple months again, but who knows?
I'm still fighting the club computer. It's a PC, uses Microsoft and G-mail. I'm still a dedicated MacBook user, and my email got folded over into Yahoo. Same address, just picked up by Yahoo. While a couple of our members are doing a great job of showing me through the steps, some more helpful than others, it's a slog. I just think I've got it, and then forget to write it down in "Heather speak", so by the next day when I want to repeat what I just "learned" I'm blank. If I can fight past the blank, I might know the following step, so it's not a total loss, Imagine it as like forgetting how to open the door before you can take the dog outside. Once outside the rest flows. So to speak. Unless maybe it rains or something.
Mostly I'm trying to send out club-wide emails with schedules and announcements. At this point they involved generating them at home, emailing them to the club, and then recreating them on the club computer. For one thing, nobody yet has found what's so simple on my laptop: hitting "foreward" by clicking on an arrow at the bottom of the received email. Perhaps G-mail doesn't have it? Perhaps it's a Microsoft thing? Who knows? All-text isn't hard, just highlight and copy-paste. Of course, at home I can go into the edit toolbar and locate the words for those functions. At the club, highlighting is the first hurdle. Then maintaining it while taking the next step in the next hurdle. That's a different kind of mouse click, and I don't do "mouse". Left Click? Right click? Click and hold? Double click and if so which side? I have a mouse pad right in my laptop at home, and frequently find myself pushing my fingers around on the top of the wooden desk at the club in front of their keyboard to move the cursor. Pretty pointless.
Even the people training me on the computer can't do it without a lot of fiddling around, finding it (by accident?) and result in not being sure just what to teach me to do. The final steps, copy and paste, are the same (long version) method as before, control c and control v. Or is it command c and v? (My fingers know at home, my brain not so much.) I love just clicking on "edit" and scrolling down the drop-down menu for the right words.
My goal for club emails includes photos. We offer lots of workshops through each month. These are posted with sign-up slips on a wall calendar in the club. You have to show up to know what is being offered. Often just a name of the project is written down, and you kind of have to know the name to decide whether you need to learn it. If you haven't done it you don't know the name. If you recognize the name chances are really good you've already taken the workshop, though sometimes with our memories, not a guarantee. It's not often helpful. So I've been asking people teaching to tape a sample of the end result (always optimistically hoping that the learner can produce what the teacher offers to teach) to the board next to the sign-up slip. Then I bring my camera and take a good enough photo that people get the general idea. Or don't because I got too close for good focus and have to go back and take another shot.
It goes like this - or is supposed to. They post it with details. I come with my camera, shoot item and signup sheet with details so I have a record of them together. I download that to my photo library, crop to much smaller size, add to an email with the details now in text next to photo, and send back to club. Then I go back to club, pull up mail program, and start fighting the cascading problems that arise in trying to translate all this into a form in a brand new email that can be mailed out to the club membership. (Rich says I need to convert photos to a ping file, or something. Just one of my issues.) The members then read their email (you'd think, right? Hah!), pick what they like, come to the club and sign up. THEN they remember to show up at the day and time.
I can only do my part of the process, and so far it's all text only, originated at the club. I'm slowly finding my way through what the problems are. Solutions .... well, hopefully soon. I'd love it to be text with all the details at the top, with a series of small pictures going across the bottom, perhaps in double rows, just a name to identify each. That would cover the month. Of course, if I do it that way, I'd be counting on the members to actually save that email long enough to remember what they wanted to learn, and to have it to remind them when it's being held. Maybe two weeks worth is a better idea.
Please do not think I'm denigrating my fellow club members. On the contrary, some of them actually have lives outside club fun: doctor's appointments, church, shopping, visitors who love our winters, other clubs, exercise in the pools and gyms, golf, bocce, or pickle ball games, funerals, home renovations, traveling....
* * *
Home has been peaceful for a while now. All the new jewelry I've been making has either gone to the club or been sent out as presents. The two workshops I taught this month are over, and I've no plans for either activity for January. I've been ordering a few new supplies for my next projects while not devoting anything near the previous time these last two weeks to doing them.
The tree still stands, doesn't get plugged in as often. Steve still struggles with back and knee pain but is using his TENS unit and getting some relief. Well, except for days like today when he says it hurts too much to bother with it. (?!?) I'm still working on getting him to order rechargeable batteries with a charger. It'll happen. Rich is making very slow progress at bringing order to the chaos of his living space, but he's run into issues. They (were) called friends. Right now we'll settle for calling them visitors, and are hoping for much, much less of them.
They aren't just a time suck, preventing things getting done. They've been bringing their own problems and making them ours. Let's start small. Cigarette butts can't make it into ashtrays, despite repeated reminders. The person mostly responsible for that - and deliberately, stubbornly so - is also bringing alcohol and pot along, leaving the trash here. At least pot is legal in the state now, so we don't need to worry about that, but it's still unnecessary trash. She's also bringing drama now, and that we really don't welcome.
Let's start with her being scizophrenic, and having long bouts of refusing her meds. So long as her behavior was reasonable, and Rich wished (or tolerated?) her company, we did our best to put up with her. Then she decided to start using our toilet for 20 minute intervals, including in the middle of the night, which pushed me into a confrontation with Rich to straighten out her behavior here or deny her access. She, as well as two other people, had been visiting so steadily and for such long periods that Rich hadn't slept for two days. I had to shoo them out, politely and reeatedly, and request they just stay away for a couple days. I thought they did, but she slipped in again while he was sleeping. Seems she was looking for a little more than friendship from him, while he thought she was way too young for him. So she tried to make him jealous by some weird interactions with one of his men friends.
That all escalated three nights ago to shouting and us having to give her the "unwelcome mat" for the house. The next night it escalated even more. Rich informed us she had all his phones, including the one that actually worked. He collects tossed out phones, opens them for parts, and cobbles together new ones. Or at least that's the idea. The working ones keep getting stolen. He did make one recently that worked but only on wi-fi. Phone bills are prohibitive. Anyway, he needed his phone(s) back and she claimed she didn't have them and wasn't going to give them to him anyway. But she needed "her" phone cable back from him. It's the one that runs his most recent working phone. Let me just say here that I'm leaving out a ton of detail. Most of it doesn't make sense anyway. Rich's other phones, the useless ones, are back. Not the good one. It's in some other guy's pocket, as Rich found out by calling it from mine and hearing it ring. That guy came along with her last night to.... Well, again, tons of information I'm leaving out. Accusations were made, mostly very loudly. Steve finally called the cops when they wouldn't leave. By the time they arrived, our two "visitors" had vanished.
The cops - county sheriff, not local Posse volunteers - had lots more information for us. They recognized her by first name and her mental illness. She has a pretty solid history of theft from the local Walgreens store, just another reason to keep her distant. We had a very pleasant conversation with them. Respect from both directions.
There remains a problem. Sleep deprivation. Mine this time. All the noise, the bruhaha, happened repeated times after I went to bed, two nights in a row. I'm maybe just nodding off, and noise erupts. I had to get up to see what was going on of course. Half an hour to clear the situation, then time to soothe back to possible sleep, and AGAIN! Front door slams and yelling in the yard. Neighbors are likely disturbed. Both Monday and Tuesday mornings, I had to be in the club with keys to open by 9 AM. No sleeping in. Between me and the dog, it takes longer to get out of the house in the morning than when I was working. There's a bit of catch-up in the afternoons, but not enough.
I started to feel it the second night, which was really morning. I'd been warned to get good sleep habits from my cardiologist. After the ablation surgery, I've had nearly perfect rhythm, now for almost three years. Not yesterday morning. I've been off cardiac meds for ages, and hope to stay that way. So if they show up again, my first reaction will be a call to the sheriff. I want some sleep. I'm starting to catch up with nice naps and no disruptions since then.
Enjoying a little rain, even, despite the dog doing her usual refusals to go out as often as usual when the ground is wet. We got two inches just before Christmas, getting more this week. Turns out there is a little throw rug that needs the washing machine. I was wondering how she could hold it that long.... Sigh.
I'll likely be back in the club tomorrow morning again. Rich has some ideas for that computer. If I'm terribly lucky, I might remember some of it. He's usually sleeping at that time. He also tried to work with me to get my Mac software to produce ping files, and I almost got it once, though when I hit the next key it all went away and I couldn't, even after long minutes of searching, locate the starting place for that process again. Grrrrrr! I guess the next workshop email going out will have to have the short version, text only, nicely condensed on the top, and photos taking up lots of space on the bottom for those who have had their interest caught enough to scroll down... down... down....
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