We Didn't Have No Internet

Friday night, the storm came through. It arrived quickly, so fast I really didn't have time to think about unplugging electronic doohickeys before the first bolts hit.

Zap! Pow!

My phone pings of "lightning has been detected near you" went nuts.

And then one bolt went seemingly straight through the house, something popped, and thunder crashed, sounding like a jet falling on top of the roof.

Just like that, we lost the telephone (I still have a landline) and the Internet.

The Internet never went completely out, though the phones did. Instead, it sent through little bits of itself, reminding me terribly of those long-ago days of dial-up, when information trickled in. Of course, programs weren't so big in dial-up days, not like the software and words that come through today. Today, every programmer assumes that we all have supercomputers running Windows 11, with high-speed Internet access.

I still have DSL. It takes me 2 hours to upload a 3-minute video. But it's better than dial-up.

My weekend suddenly looked different. I wasn't going to be able to spend time looking at Facebook, read the local paper online, or play video games. Some of that I could do on my phone, but my phone kept picking up the trickle of Internet data, so it was wildly confused as to when to use the Internet or when to use the very low cellular data I have. At one point, I walked far away from the house until the phone went to straight cellular data to get something to work, but it was too hot to stay out there long.

So what did I do? I managed to get Saturday 9 and Sunday Stealing up, albeit slowly. I worked on the bookkeeping for the various things we keep up with - the farm, my husband's backhoe business - that sort of thing. I use an old program for that, one that doesn't connect to the Internet.

I wrote postcards to voters.

I worked up a few blog posts that I'd had on my mind. I didn't need the Internet to use Notepad or MS Word for that. Maybe I will post them. Maybe I won't.

The fact that the Internet wasn't completely down made for a false sense of still being attached, because I wasn't. Sometimes I could get something to come up, but mostly not. I couldn't pay bills or check my email, except sometimes I could so I did. 

I never did get around to reading the Sunday Stealing blogs of other meme participants, because they took too long to load. I need to go back and visit those.

My phone had a workout as it played music (no Alexa), and I listened to an audiobook. 

Lastly, I made zucchini bread. It was too hot to be baking, really, but we have the squash now, and of course it comes in all at once. So I made bread, and left a loaf out to eat, and froze the rest.

That is what you do when the Internet dies.

I strongly suspect you live a better life. I have thought for a long time we might all be better off if the Internet were to die. I still think there is truth in that.

When the Computer Dies

My Dell desktop, an Inspiron 3850, was purchased in February 2021. I didn't like it from the start.

The memory card access hole broke as soon as I inserted a card. Dell tried to tell me I'd inserted the card too hard; I told them I'd been using computers since they were in diapers and knew very well how to insert a memory card into a desktop. They sent me a new memory card reader, but I had to take the computer apart and install it myself, which I did. And then bought an external memory card reader because the one in the computer is flimsy.

Then I discovered that the video card, which I had been assured was strong enough to handle my favorite video game, Skyrim, did not in fact work with Skyrim. Nor could I upgrade the video card because when I looked to see if I could, I found videos indicating that upgrading generally burned up the motherboard, even to the point of catching the entire computer on fire.

So back in May when the thing started telling me "No Hard Drive Detected," at start up, I think part of me was hoping for a new computer even though I try to use my computers for five years or more before I get a new one. I continued to use it, and nothing I did told me the hard drive was bad. I ran the Windows disk check, and the DOS check, and went to the Dell site and let its little support assistant run a check, and everything said the hard drive was fine.

I did find where the "No Hard Drive Detected" error seemed to happen a lot in Dells and it seemed to be a BIOS firmware issue. I read the instructions on how to enter the BIOS and set everything back to factory default. I did this several times.

The computer would run ok and then the error message would come back. I'd turn the computer off, and it would boot up and I'd go on about my business. But it became more and more frequent, more indicative of a problem.

I started looking at new computers.

We have computer repair stores in the nearby city. One of them has a very good reputation. I decided to take it there and see if it was the hard drive or the BIOS. If it was the BIOS, I figured they could fix that easily enough. Plus, I could live with the boot-up issue long enough to get through the year and finish up the documentation for the taxes, which was my main concern, if the hard drive wasn't bad.

I did not want the computer out of my site. I didn't want to leave it overnight. I never have computers fixed. If I can't fix them, I take the hard drive out them, and put the rest of it in the hazard waste pickup at the landfill. I have a box full of hard drives. 

Also, I did not want to go by myself. You see, in the mid-1990s I went into a local computer store, where I'd had a computer built. Apparently, women aren't supposed to go, even now, into computer stores, and 30 years ago I was assaulted by the owner when I went in for assistance with the computer he'd built for me. I spoke to a detective about it, but it was one of those "your word against his" things, aside from a few finger marks on my arm where he'd held me, and the county prosecutor didn't want to press charges. In the end, the sheriff's office convinced the man that leaving town was a good idea, and he closed up shop and left the state. 

They were satisfied with that outcome. I was not.

So, my husband went with me Friday to tote my computer into the fix-it place. We got there at 9:05 a.m. There was not a woman in site. A man took the computer from my husband, took it in the back and hooked it up, and then said, after about 15 seconds, that the hard drive was failing. Would I like him to replace it? I asked what that would cost, and he quoted me a price for a 215 GB drive. I told him that would be useless to me because I already had 192 GB of stuff on my 1 TB drive. I said put the screws back in it and give it back to me.

Next thing I know, out comes the super salesman, who says he is the company owner. He promises me a 512 GB SSD hard drive along with a secondary 2 TB storage drive, and they would transfer everything over for me and it would be like nothing ever happened. On top of that, he'd give me Adobe photoshop and some other programs. Oh, and it would have Windows 11 on it, but they could make it look sort of like Windows 10. Same price as the one the guy quoted earlier. He wanted to earn my business, super salesman said.

I looked at my husband, who shrugged and said it sounded ok to him. I agreed. What else could I do, really? The man said to come back after noon, and it would be ready.

We didn't call. We made the 45-minute drive back because, well, the man said it would be ready. But it was not ready, and we had to be at a funeral, so even though we killed an hour in the city and called again to see if it was ready, we found it was not. That left us with no choice but to go to the funeral and pick the computer up on Saturday.

Only I would have to do that by myself, because my husband had other plans. I was not happy with any of this. I hadn't wanted to leave the computer overnight. I was worried about my passwords being on the computer hard drive. I also didn't want to go into the store by myself. It was obviously a very male sort of place and women who went in there weren't supposed to know anything about computers except how to turn them on and play solitaire, and maybe use Word.

But I went and got the thing. A nice young man hooked up the computer and quickly showed me what it looked like. I asked a few questions - did I have full administrator privileges, for example. And then I mentioned my issue with the video card and Skyrim. He said it should run Skyrim. I said it never would and I doubted it would. He said to try turning down the graphics, like I hadn't already thought of that.

Anyway, I brought it home. After I downloaded Norton and reinstalled that to ensure my computer was safe, I spent 3 hours changing passwords. Most things require two-factor authentication so I was getting text messages left and right while I was trying to remember what sites would be the most dangerous to have someone get into.

Several of the programs ended up in a folder called "programs you need to reinstall." They were mostly old programs. I can't get the old MS Outlook 2003 calendar program that I prefer to work, but the MS Outlook 2007 program they installed on the computer is something I can adapt too, aside from all the birthdays and anniversaries I have now lost. iTunes appeared to have been lost forever but suddenly tonight Apple did an update and it seems to be working, although everything I had there is gone. Finding my pictures has been a trial, but they are there. Just not where I had thought they would be.

Next time I will do what I wanted to do in the first place. I will buy a new computer and start fresh, or just let them put in a new hard drive with Windows and give me back my hard drive. I back up my documents and photos every 30 minutes to an external hard drive, and installing programs is time consuming but doable. (Note: Windows 11 doesn't have an external hard drive backup app, you have to go around in circles to get that done. I've watched a video on it but haven't set it up yet, which is fine because I haven't done much, except the calendar, that requires any saving.)

I think this has been just as time consuming as setting one up anew, and it's not set up like I would have set it up. It took a long time just to get the desktop to look like something I wanted to look at. This may have been the cheaper route, but I'm not at all convinced it was the better one.

Let Me Explain

History in the Making

We were watching the 5:30 p.m. local news when they interrupted the program with breaking news from CBS News.

The former guy had been officially indicted by a grand jury in New York. The charges apparently stem from hush money payments to a porn star, but the indictment has been sealed and that's really all the public knows.

I strongly suspect there is more to it than that, or the indictment would not have been handed down.  CNN is reporting this morning that there are more than 30 counts of business fraud against the former guy. There will be more information as the thing moves forward.

That said, I do believe the man needs to be in jail, not for paying off a porn star, but for trying to undermine the functionality of the government and the U.S. Constitution. He should be behind bars for attempting a coup.

I do not believe that any indictments or trials against the former guy are politically motivated simply because he was/is a politician (and running for the office of president again). I believe in the rule of law, and I also believe that no one is above the law - and the Department of Justice's current stance that sitting presidents can't be touched is simply wrong. We do not have kings in this country. Presidents are not demi-gods here. They're just men.

And men who break the law should go to jail.

This is the first time a former president has been indicted, so it's history-making. Were there presidents who should have been indicted after they left office? Probably. I always thought George W. Bush committed war crimes and should have been held responsible for that. All of that torture and Guantanamo Bay stuff could not have been legal.

Here in Virginia, our own governor, Bob McDonnell, was indicted and convicted of federal corruption charges. He was the first Virginia governor to be convicted of a felony. It ruined his career. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States and the Justice Department decided not to re-try the case.

Let's not forget Oliver North, who was convicted for the Iran-Contra affair (charges vacated in exchange for Congressional testimony). He was on the National Security Council at the time. Not a high-ranking official, but not a nobody, either.

There is a long list of indictments and prosecutions against federal politicians here. None of these people were immune simply because they were in politics.

So, there's precedent for this, at least at the state level. The former guy is not going to go to jail; there will be a trial, and if he's found guilty, he will appeal. He will continue to walk among us, unless federal charges come through.

Whether or not this is enough to convince many of his followers that the guy doesn't walk on hallowed ground with every step he takes, is another matter. I'm afraid the former guy is merely representative of a large minority of Americans, who are racist and hateful people. I don't understand what they're angry about, but they are angry.

Here's the Explanation

I am angry, too, because this is not the United States I felt I was promised when I was growing up. I watched my father rise from literally nothing to being a wealthy businessman. He had opportunities that my brother and I did not, because in 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected. From that moment on, the America that I recognized began to change, and the rolling boulder of societal collapse began building.

Like many my age, I did not see it creeping up on us. I was busy trying to establish a career, trying to keep a husband happy, and trying to have children. I didn't like it when the regulations over media were changed - I could see that was going to be a problem. I didn't like it when it became obvious there had been shenanigans with the Middle East that had ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. I didn't like the changes to the welfare system instituted under Bill Clinton (I also didn't care who he slept with, just like I don't care who the former guy slept with.). I'm pretty sure Al Gore should have been president in 2000, and would have been, except for Supreme Court intervention. I was completely against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, two years after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. I was horrified by the PATRIOT ACT. I think that is when I began paying more attention.

In a Thursday Thirteen post yesterday, I noted 14 points of fascism and said I blamed both sides. Partly that was because I knew if I placed the blame solely upon Republicans, the Republicans that I wanted to read the piece would not. But it was also because I do blame the Democrats, too. 

I blame the Democrats for not paying attention, for letting things get to this point, and for not acting sooner to stop gun violence, to create a fairer tax system, for not working to stem racism, sexism, and all the other "isms" that upset people. The Democrats at times (admittedly small windows, but still) had the numbers to push through a federal law on abortion and they did not. They could have fought to keep the assault weapon ban in place when it expired in 2004. I don't know why they let that one get by them. Do I think the assault weapon ban would have hindered some of the domestic terrorism we're experiencing today? You bet.

Maybe Democrats play too nice. I know from the right-wing stuff I read that they think the Democrats are forcing diversity and equality down their throats and taking away their version of religion, and that the Democrats are the fascists (a word which seems to have replaced "socialist" in their lexicon), but I don't see that. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of the fence to see that so I can't see it, because I don't believe in meddling in other people's lives and just want to be left alone. 

What I do see is that some Democrats were more concerned with maintaining their seats and positions than they were with ensuring that the dreams of their constituents had validity. So they did next to nothing to counteract the authoritarian bent of their peers on the right.

Truly, it is not the Democrats whom I consider to be fascists and authoritarians. That lies solely at the feet of Republicans. The Democrats may have rolled over, but it's the Republicans who have actively worked to undermine the things - including the singular thing, the United States Constitution - that made this country great, and instead have made this country less than it could be. 

Republicans have cut taxes, fought against infrastructure improvements, turned things that government should run over to the private sector, created culture wars and upset people over stupid things like books, Disney, and the statue of David in Italy, for heaven's sake. The Democrats are not the ones undermining the very foundation of the New Deal (which gave my father the advantages he had), they're not the ones threatening Social Security and Medicare, they are not the ones kowtowing to a man who is not worthy of the dirt on the bottom of their own shoes. Republicans are doing that.

Not all Democrats are good people, just like not all good people are Democrats. I know some very nice folks who vote Republican, for whatever reason. When I talk with a reasonable Republican (yes, there are many, the far right calls them RINOs), generally it boils down to wanting the same thing; the difference is merely in the way we go about obtaining it. And frequently, at least to my face, they'll agree with me that yes, some corporations need to pay more, that the infrastructure needs indicate that more government, not less, is justified. (But they still don't want their money going to some non-white person with babies.)

So yes, both parties have contributed to the decline of this country and to the chaos I now see around me. But one party has contributed by being active. The other has simply been too passive.

I'll end this now with what I really believe in, deep in my soul:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And I'll note that Justice is first, followed by domestic Tranquility.

It's Justice that is working on the former guy right now. Domestic Tranquility is now just a dream, and the source, I feel, of current cultural unrest.

How It All Went Down - Part III

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Christmas morning.

My husband rose before I did.

"Time to do it again. It's like Groundhog Day," he said as he pulled on his clothes. He was thinking of the Bill Murray movie where he is trapped on February 2 for a very long time.

I lay beneath the covers, not willing to brave the chill. I finally pulled myself out from under the covers and grabbed my robe; it was as cold as the house.

Ice had formed on the windows in the bedroom overnight; we were running a small humidifier off the generator. And the water had gathered on the windowpanes, where it froze.

I looked at myself in the mirror and ran a brush through my hair before I went to say good morning. I looked awful.

In the kitchen, I found my husband had placed a Christmas card at my place at the table. We had a breakfast of frozen pancakes heated in the microwave. 

After we ate, he went outside and gassed up the generator again while I rinsed the plates in cold water and put them in the dishwasher.

Then we had Christmas. My husband gave me an autographed photo of Melissa Etheridge and a few other things. I gave him clothes and a small George Foreman grill, because we'd tossed the huge one out a few weeks prior. He'd had a new hip and a new utility vehicle this past year; I didn't need to give him anything more.

It was over quickly, and the circumstances sapped most of the joy out of the morning. He had to bundle up again and head out to check the cattle and unfreeze the watering troughs. I cleaned up the Christmas paper, put the gifts back under the tree, and took another sponge bath at the kitchen sink.

By the time he returned, I was dressed. My chores were done. I was trying hard to find the Christmas spirit, but it was eluding me. This was stressful. This wasn't what we were supposed to be doing. I was worried about him being out in the cold and the wind, afraid he would make himself sick. He looked tired. I looked tired.

He left again, and I spent some time standing at the patio door, feeling the sun come in and offer a small respite of heat. It also brought flies, which have plagued me since November. I removed an empty water bottle from the recycling bin and began to catch the ones buzzing at the patio door - five in all.

I remembered a fairy tale from long ago called "Seven in one blow" where some guy, a tailor by trade, had killed 7 flies in one swat, and he made himself up a shirt that said Seven in One Blow. Everyone took that to mean he had killed 7 people. I think he ended up being a knight.

Nobody was going to make me a knight.

I went back to my chair and propped my feet up on a footstool. I didn't mention this before, as I forgot, but on Christmas Eve, the husband of my best friend who passed away last year brought us a footstool that he had made from the cherry tree from our back yard. I did not see him as he had simply dropped it off with my husband as he was out trying to keep the generator running.

Now I pondered the footstool. Earlier in the week, I had had a talk with my friend, wondering if there was life after death and if so, could she send me a sign that I would recognize as such. Was this my sign?

Several people texted me to wish me Merry Christmas. I texted back, trying to sound cheerful. All the while I was feeling very low.

We ate another lunch of a ham sandwich, and then my husband said he was going back out after more gasoline. By this time, we figured we were spending about $65 a day to keep the generator running. The battery for my car had cost over $200. This was becoming an expensive weekend.

My husband left, and I cleaned up the lunch mess. Then I looked at the wall where I tape the Christmas cards. I wanted to yank every one of them down and then tear the Christmas tree down and put it all away.

Just as my hand moved toward the first card, the phone rang. 

"There's a bucket truck in Lanetta's driveway!" my husband exclaimed. She is our neighbor, and the line was broken not far from her entrance.  "You need to turn everything off, throw the breakers, and turn off the generator. I'm at the gas station."

Our cousin had called him and told him the power company was here, he explained as I raced around the house turning off everything so I could throw the breakers. But which breakers? Out in the garage, faced with a barrage of cords and a breaker box that I never deal with, I had no idea what I was doing. He tried to tell me, and I started to cry.

"I don't know anything about this stuff, you have never showed me how to do this," I wailed.

Finally, I figured out which were the main breakers to turn off, and then I went outside, coatless, gloveless, and hatless, and turned off the generator. Since we were backfeeding the generator into the house circuit breakers, there is always a risk to the linemen if you leave the generator running.

The silence that came over everything when I turned off the generator was almost as deafening as the generator itself. I went back inside to sit and wait. I bundled up in a blanket and picked up a magazine.

My friend T. texted me. "We're coming over with food," she said, not giving me a choice.

She and her husband arrived while the power company was still working. She came in bearing brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, biscuits, ham, and hot chocolate. She gave me a big hug and a kiss but didn't stay long because she had company.

I was more than touched that she took time out to bring me something to eat - I wept again after she left, partly with relief and partly just because it was that kind of day.

At 2:30 p.m., the lights came on. 

The power was restored on Christmas day.

That night, we heated up the food my friend had brought us, and we ate like a king and queen. 

It was the best meal of my life.

Christmas had come and gone, and it certainly had not been the festive event I'd anticipated. But I was loved and cared for, and safe in my house with the fellow I've been with for 39 years.

I knew who my friends were, and who cared if I froze or not. That was a great gift, wasn't it?

Next year, I will read back over this, and laugh.

-End-

When the Internet Goes Down

Addicted. It's an appropriate word for the way I've felt most of the weekend.

It rained, and my internet first became spotty, then died only to occasionally revive itself.

I couldn't blog, couldn't play video games, couldn't look up answers to questions. Oh, some of it I did on my phone, but I have a very low data usage plan, so I couldn't spend a lot of time on that doing things I'd otherwise do with the wi-fi.

There went my plans to watch the new Louise Penny series, Three Pines, on Amazon. No streaming without the Internet.

So too my plans to write blog posts in advance, although the main thing that stopped me there was anxiety and nerves. I could have written the posts in MS Word and saved them to cut and paste later, if I'd really been desperate.

Mostly it was knowing I couldn't do things that made me want to do them.

Strange how that works, eh?

We still have a landline, and that also went dead. Old fashioned, I know, but my husband had to have one for work - it was in his contract - and the landline number is the one on his business cards, still. So, we keep it, and many things are tied to it.

I had medicine called in for refills, so I couldn't get the call from my pharmacy to know when to pick things up because it's tied to the landline. I couldn't look it up online, either, to see if it was ready.

Some online shopping awaited my attention too - a pickup order for Sam's Club, a little something I thought about for my husband (and no longer remember because I didn't write it down and couldn't order it the moment I thought of it). 

The internet has us all tied to a way of life that is very different than it was 25 years ago. It's amazing how much it has changed the way we function and operate.

Being old, I knew how to entertain myself - there's always house cleaning and a book - but still, I noticed the lack of internet in my routine.

I felt off kilter. It also frustrated me to think I'm so dependent upon a computer and access to the outside world.

It really is a time suck, and my husband, who seldom is online, is probably far better off than I am, addicted as I am to my online reading and adventures.

Thank heavens it's fixed. Now if I could only get a fiber line and stop using DSL.

(I tried to visit Saturday 9 and Sunday Stealing blogs during the small windows when I had service. If I didn't get around to you, I'm sorry!)

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. What period of history is your favorite to read about?

A. I like to read about all eras. This year I've read about the Roman Empire, World War I, World War II, the 1930s, and 1940s.

2. What is your favorite genre of fiction?

A. Fantasy, but I read a lot of different types of books.

3. Do you choose a book by its cover?

A. Sometimes. Usually, I read the blurbs on the back and whatever information is available in the front, and maybe the first page, before a purchase. If it's from the library, I may not go by anything other than the name of the author or the title.

4. Where do you do most of your reading?

A. I have a recliner in the living room.

5. Without looking, guess how many books are in your TBR pile. Now, look. Were you right?

A. Most of my TBR books are in my Kindle now, and I'm going to guess there are over 100 in there.

6. How many movies are on your TBW list?

A. Two, I think. Elvis and The Secrets of Dumbledor.

7. What's your favorite genre of movie?

A. My favorite movies are the Lord of the Rings movies, but fantasy movies are not necessarily my favorite genre as they can be violent and misogynistic. So whatever genre movies like Steel Magnolias and Under the Tuscan Sun are classified as would be my favorite.

8. Do you still go to see movies in the theater?

A. I haven't been to the theater since Wonder Woman was released in 2017.

9. You have $10,000 and no strings or obligations for one full day. Where do you go and what do you do?

A. I would go to a computer store and purchase a really nice computer. Maybe a good Apple even though everything I've ever used is Windows based.

10. How many songs are on your favorite playlist?

A. I don't know. Alexa won't tell me, and I don't have the Amazon Music app downloaded to look. It will play for over 4 hours without repeating, so figure 4 minutes a song . . . that's 15 an hour . . . so at least 60, but I imagine it's more than that.

11. What method do you use to listen to music (Spotify, iTunes, Pandora...)?

A. I listen to Amazon Music on my Echo Dot. Otherwise, I listen to CDs. (Yes, I still listen to CDs.)

__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

What Did I See?

Last night I went into the kitchen for a drink of water, a nightly routine. My husband was already in bed.

As I stood at the sink, I caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision. I turned to see a silhouette of a man. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

I went back to the bedroom and told my husband I'd seen a man's ghost. He hopped out of bed and asked me to describe what I'd seen, which I did. He began checking windows, turning on outdoor lights, making sure the doors were locked.

Very male stuff. Very "here and now" oriented, too. My husband deals with reality - cows, hay, the weather. He has no time for intuition, the indescribable, the unknown.

In the front yard, which would have been behind me when I was at the sink, deer lay not far from the front porch. They stood up when we turned on the exterior light. Maybe, I suggested, one had been on the porch, and I'd caught the flash of movement through the front door window. I've seen them on the porch before.

Having satisfied himself that nothing was amiss, he steered me to bed. I lay there, waiting and pondering.

My initial thought upon seeing this vision was that it was my father. He is still very much alive, though. So, then I thought maybe it was my grandfather, popping in for a visit. This morning, my brother suggested it could have been my husband's father, though I wouldn't think him to be one to be a ghost. My grandpa, yes, he might be a spectral entity come to say hello, but not my father-in-law.

Maybe, though, it was my own reflection, a trick of the light. However, I've seen and experienced enough weird stuff to know that we don't know everything.

Weirdness has followed me around since I was a child, but it has been a while since I've had this kind of freakiness pop up out of nowhere. My brother and I both take dreams and such seriously; there's always been a bit of fey on both sides of the family. We've seen it, heard it, felt it. It leaves an impression.

Besides, there's a different feel to a warning dream than a regular dream. I can tell what I'm dreaming is not really a dream.

But this wasn't a dream. I was awake, readying for bed.

Yes, it is strange. Yes, I am weird. I've been weird all of my life and I'm old, so I don't expect that to change now. I'll probably just get weirder.

But in the meantime - what did I see?

Free Range Zoo

Last week, we took a drive up the road a bit to visit a drive-thru zoo. I am not a fan of zoos, but this was allegedly an open zoo with the animals roaming about on 180 acres. While that may sound like a lot of land, it is not. Not for as many animals as they had in there.

The safari place sells buckets of food, too, and you are supposed to feed the animals from your car. This means the animals are conditioned to think that car equals food. Most of the animals hang out at the entrance of the park, because obviously by the time you get to the middle or the end, you've given out all of your food.

I found it terrifying to have the car suddenly engulfed by a slew of domesticated wild animals. I still have llama slobber on my car window, my repayment for not purchasing the bucket of food.

The following pictures were taken through the car windows, so there is some glare and reflection.

This is what greets you when you drive over the cattle guard and into the safari area.

They don't like unopened windows. Yikes. This is a llama.

These are either fallow deer or axis deer. I am not sure which.

When I saw this, all I could think of was hakuna matata, from The Lion King. However, the guidebook doesn't say they have wart hogs. This may be a kune kune pig from New Zealand.

I think this is an eland, which hails from Africa.

This may be an elk.

I am not sure whether this is a blackbuck from India or a scimitar horned oryx from North Africa.

Some kind of deer. Fallow deer, maybe.

The little axis deer are very small. They came from India. There were a lot of them.

More deer.

Notice the field. There is little grass there for the animals to eat.

This is a blackbuck, which comes from India.

I think this was another elk.

They don't mind getting close.

These were resting a little distance from the car. I think they're elk.

Elk, I guess.

They had several white animals. In the wild, when we see albino deer on the farm, it generally means the herd is too large and there has been too much inbreeding.

This is an axis deer from India.

I think I liked the zebra the best. This is a "Grant's zebra' from West Africa and/or Zimbabwe.

This bird was huge. Ostrich, I think.

This was further into the park. The animals all came running toward the vehicles. Note again the lack of grass in the fields.

A kune kune pig from New Zealand.

A llama who is figuring out it should have gone to the front gate, I suspect.

You could see the giraffes but they were in a different fenced-in area and so they did not come near the car.

A fallow deer. They are found in Europe and Asia.

The farewell team of llamas.

We probably won't go back. We both thought the animals looked listless and sad. We know how many cattle we can run on the pastures of our farm, and it's not anywhere close to the number of animals on this small acreage. The organization feeds hay and there appeared to be a steady stream of cars behind us with the animal food, but this is not what I consider fun. It was a nice outing with my husband as far as that goes, but animals like these need to be roaming free. At the least, the herds of small deer and llamas need to be thinned out. There were too many ostriches, too.

The Husband's Hip Replacement

I have not said much about my husband's need for a hip replacement, because this has been his issue. While it affects me greatly, my input in how things went down was minimal.

I'm just the little woman, second class citizen and all, anyway. (Yes, I'm writing this after the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS decision. I will discuss that more some other time.)

Also, I cannot speak to his pain. I know he was hurting, and I know he was having problems, but pain is subjective. I've lived with what I consider a be a level 5 - 8 pain since my gallbladder surgery in 2013. Some days it's doable. Most days it isn't. Some people (generally women, in my experience) can withstand pain better than others. He has said his pain ranged from a 3 to an 8, depending on what he was doing.

I can't speak to anything else about this entire event except from my perspective. So that is what this is. This is what happened to me while my husband had surgery.

We've known since late December that my husband would need to have his hip replaced due to arthritis and degeneration of cartilage and all of that. However, before the doctor would operate, he required that my husband be off nicotine for six weeks prior to surgery. My husband does not smoke, but he chewed tobacco, and had for as long as I'd known him. I'd tried unsuccessfully to get him to stop, but the surgeon was able to do something I could not.

My husband quit chewing tobacco.

However, that took a long time, the weaning off of it, and in the interim my husband opted for a steroid shot in his hip, which also meant a three-month delay in the surgery. By then, it was spring and there were septic tanks to install, and the first cutting of hay to get up, and all of this other guy stuff that he wanted to deal with. He had his ankle fused in the winter of 2019, and we lucked out and had a mild year as far as freezing and snow then. Husband realized that even if he has to pay someone to make hay in July (which we will have to do), he'd be better off to do the surgery in the summer because the cows can take care of themselves during warm weather. They don't need to be fed and the watering troughs aren't going to freeze. They are giving birth, and we've already lost one calf to vultures, but generally speaking our cows are on their second or third birth and are good mammas. He would lose some septic tank installation work, perhaps, but since Covid and with a recession here (it's here I don't care what the economists say), work has been slow anyway. A cousin and a friend agreed to check on the cattle a few times a week.

As for me, my doctor insisted I get the fourth booster for Covid if I had to spend a day in the hospital waiting room, so that was my only personal preparation aside from attempting to strengthen my endurance and walk more, which succeeded only in making me hurt more. On Friday, June 17, the young woman who helps me with the heavy housework performed a thorough cleaning, and we removed rugs and obstacles.

Monday, June 20, was the big day. We had to be at the hospital in Roanoke at 6 a.m. My husband insisted we get up at 3:30 a.m. on Monday to get there, even though it's a 30-minute drive, especially at that time of morning. The traffic is worse after 6 a.m. He had to take a special shower using an antibacterial cleaner and some kind of cloth with an antiseptic wipe, too.

The drive to Roanoke was uneventful. We had to go to the North Entrance of Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Fortunately, there were handicapped parking spaces readily available there, and since I have a handicapped parking permit, we were able to use that, and I didn't have to worry about valet parking. This also put the car within walking range of the waiting room, so I was able to leave a cooler full of water in the back seat instead of traversing the entire length of the hospital (which is about two blocks long or better) to obtain a drink from a vending machine.

After our arrival, we checked in. We had on KN95 masks, and the hospital required masks for entry. They were handing out thin little surgical blue masks, though. More on that later.

We sat in a waiting room filled with chairs that I feel sure were there when my husband's father had a heart attack in 1995, and they were not set apart. The hospital did away with the Covid distancing on May 23. I was not happy about that, since I am still careful and wear a mask in the grocery store. 

I do not like hospitals, but I especially dislike Roanoke Memorial. It is the dreariest, creepiest, scariest place I can think of. I have never had a good experience there myself, not in any of the multitude of operations I have there. The facility is dull and uninspiring, with nothing to catch the eye. The place is absolutely, totally unremarkable, oldish looking, and in need of a face lift.

The outpatient waiting room is especially bad and was no better than it was in 2019. Old furniture, crowded - I think at the high point during the day there were at least 100 people in there - it's simply an unappetizing facility with no imagination or creativity about it whatsoever. Chairs lined the hallway near the entrance as well. They were spaced out better and that area was not so crowded, but it was also difficult to hear the nurses call out people's names in that area.

At 6 a.m., we sat in the ugly waiting room and waited for them to call my husband's name and take him back to pre-op. We waited some more, and my husband became agitated. They did not take him back until 7:59 a.m.  About an hour later, someone came and asked me to go to be with my husband in pre-op, but I couldn't go back until I took off my KN95 mask and put on one of their flimsy little blue surgical masks. I considered this to be among the stupider things I had seen in a long time, to have to remove a better mask to put on a worse mask to go into the bowels of a fricking hospital during a pandemic.

The volunteer led me down a long array of corridors, dreary even though they had stars painted on them. They were lined with gurneys (fortunately no one was in them), and it was a long, tiring walk.

I found my husband in a gurney, with tubes running out of both arms, his head covered with a little net, and an IV of saline running into him. He had on green socks with rubber on the bottom and a blue paper gown. They'd shaved his entire right side and leg. I watched him shove globs of iodine on a stick up his nose (to keep him from getting MRSA) and held his hand and said all the good wifely things one should say at such times.

The main reason they bring the family back is so someone can take control over the clothing and belongings. (I do not for one minute think it's because of empathy or sympathy for what the patient and family is going through.) I don't know why they can't stick the personal belongings under the gurney but suspect it has to do with their fear that someone will leave a tape recorder running and they will be sued for saying something like he has ugly feet or some such.

The operating room nurses came in around 10 a.m. and hauled him away, and I went back to the waiting room, which was two blocks away give or take a couple of steps, hauling his big shoes and his shirt and short pants in a bag with me. In the waiting room, I sat and watched an older gentleman try not to fall out of a chair that apparently was falling apart. Another man read Stephen King's The Stand, and a lady in the corner had a laptop with a very loud video on it. Everywhere there were clings, clangs, songs, and dings as people's cell phones alerted them to texts or phone calls.

Soon I felt claustrophobic as the waiting room filled with more and more people, so I wandered out to my car and drank a Boost and a bottle of water. When I came back in, there was a seat available in the hallway where the chairs were further apart, so I sat there and breathed a bit easier. In front of me was a long stretch of windows, and I could see outside. My Blue Ridge Mountains were in the background, the sky was clear, and a little greenery from the bushes and grass along the side the road made me feel more at home.

I watched passing traffic, and I could see my own vehicle. People came and went without anyone stopping them, and given the recent shootings, I couldn't help thinking how easy it would be for someone with a semi-automatic gun with a silencer to take out first the valet parking person, then the single secretary checking people in, strafe the folks like me sitting the chairs in the hallways, and then wipe out the other 80 or so folks in the waiting room long before anyone even knew what was going on. I doubted anyone would have time to call 911 before the shooter went on into another corridor, taking out doctors and nurses as he went.

So, I imagined that little scenario in between trying to read Lord of the Rings and watching the little screen with my husband's special number on it that told me when he was out of surgery and into recovery.

That happened at 11:29 a.m. I breathed a sigh of relief, since that meant he'd made it through the surgery ok. You just never know when a surgery might go wrong.

My cell rang and it was the surgeon. He told me everything went as expected, and my husband had a lot of arthritis in the hip that they'd cleaned out, and he was in recovery. Someone would call me later to tell me he was in a room.

I remained in the hallway and began contemplating lunch. I had a ham sandwich on ice in the car, but I didn't really want it. I called my brother, whose office isn't far from the hospital, and asked if he could bring me a sandwich. He said he would, but the nurse called and said my husband was in a room, so I texted my brother to abort the sandwich mission. Then I went in search of my husband, now on the 9th floor instead of the 4th, where I was.

The elevators stared at me like the monstrosities they are before I sucked in all the air I could and boarded one for the appropriate floor. I dislike elevators and intensely dislike these particular elevators as they come to a nauseating stop on every floor. (Many years ago, I walked off of these elevators and fainted dead away, so there's that.)

However, I made it to the 9th floor only to find my husband wasn't in the room I'd been given, but instead was in another room for whatever reason. He was sitting up and the nurse was taking vitals or something when I arrived. Also, his socks were now grey.

They brought him a turkey sandwich and a fruit cup, along with Baked Lays Potato chips, which he doesn't like, so I had his potato chips for lunch.

I cheered him on as he got up and on a walker. A physical therapist walked him around the hallway. He finally urinated, and that was all they needed to send him home. While we waited on the discharge paperwork, the hospital brought him an early dinner (it was by now 4 p.m.), and he didn't want it. I ate it since I'd not had anything but a Boost and potato chips all day. For hospital food, it wasn't bad, or maybe I was simply hungry.

Then the nurse came in and said he would be discharged at the front of the hospital and not at the North Entrance. It was 4:45 p.m. We'd asked and been told that anyone could leave from the North Entrance, but one could not get back into the hospital after 5 p.m. at that entrance. The nurse said ok, we'll take him out the North Entrance, but you'd better go get your car because that's not exactly what we were told. "We'll try to get him down there by 5 p.m.," she called after me as I raced from the room.

I hustled off to stare down the monstrous elevators again, and then make my way to the car. Once there, I called my brother and asked him to meet me at my house in about a half hour. I pulled the car into the patient loading area and the nice valet man said he'd put in a courtesy call to the 9th floor to tell them I was waiting.

At 5:10 p.m., they loaded him into my car. This took a little time. We'd both been concerned about the bucket seats in my Toyota, because his knees weren't supposed to be above his hips and my husband is tall. His knees are above his hips in most chairs.

I had brought extra padding for the seat to raise him up, and that worked. So off I went, driving home down the interstate during rush hour. (I dislike driving on the interstate during rush hour. Blah.)

My wonderful brother was waiting at the house when we arrived. I opened the garage door, and he went through and opened the patio door. I drove the car up to the patio and my husband took his walker from my brother and shuffled into the house.

And that was the doing of that deed.

We've been home since then, and he is mending. He has, however, worn me out. Since I can't bend and stoop without pain, this has been problematic for me and caused me to look longingly at his pain medications while I tried to tamper my pain with my normal meds (which are not narcotic). For one thing, the man drops everything he picks up. If I dropped stuff as much as he does, I'd have worn out my hip, too. I gave him one of those long doohickeys that people use to pick things up with to alleviate some of that.

He's needed to wear compression stockings. Getting those things off and on is a struggle. The pair they sent him home with were so hard to get off I thought we were going to have to resort to cutting them off of him, but I finally managed.

The next day, he called the doctor's office and my brother picked up another pair of compression socks for him in a larger size. I can get these on, but we are both breathing hard by the time I have them on his big ol' feet. I have to wash them every night.

He could shower on Wednesday, and I have to dry off his legs and feet. More bending and stooping.

I have not had a good night's sleep since Saturday, because he is up and down a lot and requires my assistance to get in the bed. I made a grocery store pickup on Thursday because we were out of a few things, but he had a visitor, so he wasn't alone while I was gone.

A shout out to my brother, who has been very helpful and attentive, and thus deserving of an A+, to my father and stepmother, who brought us dinner Wednesday night, and my friend Cathy who brought us dinner Thursday night. Also, a shout-out to my young cleaning help, who made a special stop by my house this morning simply to run the vacuum for me because I was in so much pain I couldn't do it and I am trying to keep the house clean, so my husband doesn't develop an infection. Additionally, my mother-in-law has been bringing us the newspaper and the mail. Many thanks!

We will see how things go from here. My husband is hoping to be back to work in six weeks.