February 08, 2007

1:50 p.m.

Sing Ho, Un-Chartered Seas

Two days of hell with Charter (and one belated, emphatic, and very funny warning message from my landlady) taught me that they're a company to be shunned. Now my internet service is compromised until AT&T can schedule someone to come and redirect the wiring back the way it used to be (last Tuesday, such a long age ago). All's well that ends well, though; going back to AT&T got me a price that's less than half of what it used to be. I think they called it a "winback package." Meanwhile I'm trying to come up with productive things to do that don't involve trying to send email or websurf.

I'm in the kitchen on my older, smaller laptop that isn't connected to the internet. I love the keyboard on this one; it has the exact right amount of spring, so typing is fluid and fast. This is where I've been trying (sporadically) to write the story about my mother. Working on this machine is like going into a cabin in the woods. The OS was pirated from my ex-brother in law's work, and it's an odd, quirky version; doesn't do everything the way I expect it to. I can't move any icons around on the desktop, for example; they go down the column in the order in which I create them, and I wasn't able to find a way to unlock their order or, say, put one on the right side apart from the others. It doesn't have much software; Word, Outlook (which I never use), basic things like Notepad, a few other built-ins I don't use, and a nice version of Mahjongg. I took everything else off so it would be my writing tool. I don't use it much, but I like it.

One day I might wipe it out again and put a better OS in it, or make it so I can travel with it and get email. For right now it's my silent partner, full of secrets waiting to be unlocked.

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I just finished rereading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King. I read it in two days while waiting for Charter to come fix their problems; it's just a little paperback, but that was fast, even for me. I read much of the second half out loud, to draw it out, to do the voices, to get all the juice out of the places where the girl is really, really in trouble and has to come up with some resource from deep inside that she's never used before. That's what I love about Stephen King; he tells stories about the indomitability of the human spirit, against impossible, unfathomable odds and adversaries. We need those lessons. We need The Lord of the Rings. Now more than ever.

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I'll go and do laundry today at Rose's, but now it's only 9:00 in the morning and I'm enjoying the sunup through my kitchen windows. The plants are so happy, even the Aralia, which loves to die off in big chunks if it's feeling unwell. It's been so bitterly cold for a while that I've run the heaters a lot, and the humidifier. I've paid ahead on the gas bill but I think the next one will show a balance. We got the cold late, though, and there's still just a thin crusting of snow in places, so it's still an uncommonly mild winter so far. I just read an article in the Farmer's Almanac about all the good sides of global warming. They predict that a rise of three point something degrees in London will result in maybe 2,000 more deaths from summer heat, but a drop of maybe 20,000 deaths from winter cold. Okay... they didn't talk about the polar bears drowning on melting ice. I'll gladly celebrate my warmer Connecticut winter, but inside I still worry that we're fucking things up for everything else. When will we have a compassionate national leadership that gives a fig about this?

We're starting to send CD packets out to radio stations in the UK. The responses I've gotten from DJs to my initial query have been so enthusiastic and positive. Some of them know our agent and send their regards. I already feel welcome there. I think Welcome is part of England's national product.

Rose said she saw Mike the other day; he had to stop by her work to drop off a form or something, and she had to give him back a couple of things. She said he's dyeing his hair and beard brownish (after historically railing about men who colored their hair after a certain age) and that he looks tired and old. I told her it sounds like he's letting go of old ideas, and maybe that's good. And he's been through a lot, and he's somewhere close to his mid 60s at this point. He has a right to look tired. I know she struggles between wanting to perceive things that reinforce her relief and happiness that she's where she is, and wanting to be compassionate and fair. It's hard not to feel gossipy about someone who was nasty to you and told lies about you. But that's what he seemed to believe, so to him it didn't feel like lies, I guess. What grief misunderstanding is.

Speaking of men in our lives, Dar and I had a wonderful, rebonding conversation a couple of nights ago. After the long day where Charter came and took 3 hours to figure out how to connect cable phone and internet into this archaic house, and then the technician left and there was a connectivity problem and I spent another 3 hours on the phone between Charter and Symantec, trying to diagnose the problem, for which no one would take responsibility, and they finally scheduled another tech to come the next day (yesterday) to troubleshoot again... after all this, I sat down to a long-awaited dinner and Dar was the only person I wanted to talk to. We've been largely out of touch except when the band has gone to see his shows, and I called and he wasn't there and I missed him so keenly in that moment and all he's meant to me, that I burst into tears and sobbed over my sesame chicken. Later that night he called me back and we talked a long time. I told him what had happened and we reaffirmed that we didn't want to lose each other and it was very emotional, and good. He's out of shows for a few weeks now, maybe a couple of months, and I'm busy until the end of March but we made a date to get together then and play. I was much relieved that I hadn't lost him.

Incidentally, the tech who came yesterday was large and surly and tracked mud on my carpet. He switched the Charter modem out for another one and the problem ceased. I was almost disappointed. I wanted to be able to say, "Cancel the service!" but then it was fixed and I let the beast go on his way. I was still dissatisfied with the phone arrangement; there is only one place to plug in a phone now, as it goes through a cable modem, and that's in the living room -- and I don't use it much in the winter (the room, not the phone). I can either use my caller ID phone, or my hands-free phone, but not both. My caller ID no longer knows people's names. Everyone is an Unknown Caller. And then my landlady called and told me her horror story about Charter and their inferior service and products, and said, "Run! Don't walk, don't think twice, just RUN as fast as you can away from them!" She had me laughing so hard, and I said, "This is the last sign from the Universe that I need. Thank you!" And I called AT&T back and told them to sign me back up, that I'd had enough. They offered me the Secret Returning Customer Contingency Package for exactly the same amount Charter had offered, with all the services I had before, and I almost cried again. They said they'd do their very best to get it switched and have someone come out before I have to leave Thursday of next week.

In the evening, I turned on the computer again and the connectivity problem was BACK. I have about fifteen-second windows of opportunity to send or receive email before it goes down (which it does, twice a minute), or to navigate from one web page to another. It's almost not worth it. I cursed the surly technician who did not fix my problem. He had assured me emphatically (and not unpatronizingly) that it was a problem with MY computer. Well, honey; if MY computer doesn't like YOUR modem, you can take YOUR modem and shove it. It worked fine with DSL.

So I don't know when I'll be able to upload this, but maybe at Rose's today. It's sunny and the kitchen is pleasant. Life is very good, and I'm grateful. I also started doing my Reiki affirmations again this week, which I'd forgotten about for a few months, and that feels very centering.

I guess I'll get dressed, gather the laundry, make my list of things to do out in the world, and head out into the chilly, bright day.