I mean, I know what I’m doing–the motions I’m making, the checklist of details and minutiae I’ve outlined, the probate forms I’ve drafted, the gathering into order what was already in order but what feels better to reorder . . . → Read More: Treading, Treading (Flailing, Thrashing), Treading]]> I’m going to level with you: I don’t know what I’m doing.

I mean, I know what I’m doing–the motions I’m making, the checklist of details and minutiae I’ve outlined, the probate forms I’ve drafted, the gathering into order what was already in order but what feels better to reorder and reorder and reorder so that my hands have a job, a purpose, even a mindless one.

But I don’t know what I’m doing.

At varying times in the last year, I’ve stepped out to the edge, peered down into the coolness, let my toes dangle over the ideas of what would a world without my father look like? What would my reflection look like when I become ‘old’ enough to have a parent who has passed away? What will we do when he is gone?

I didn’t stay long at that edge. Couldn’t. I had to maintain hope that it would be a far distant time before we actually faced that world, before we were waist deep in it, neck deep in it, treading through it.

Oh, but it was a blink.

There are waves of realness and unrealness. They wash over us–me, my mother, my sister–at different times. I don’t know what their waves feel like and I don’t presume to describe their grief, their private handling of their waves. I just know that we’re all treading.

Things sneak up on me. I pass a box in the garage with a garden cart that needs assembly, am reminded of how I’m looking forward to that task, am reminded of the telephones that my dad let me take apart and reassemble with him when I was a small, small girl. Because he was a telephone man and I was (am) an assembly nerd.

Things ambush me. Yesterday I copied the text of my father’s obituary from one document into another. While writing this post I attempted to paste a sentence from one paragraph to another, only to have the obituary paste here instead.

And I go looking for things. While on hold on the phone, I prowled through the drawers of my parents’ office, found a notebook he’d kept from December 2007-December 2011, filled with cryptic notes and to-dos and senseless-to-me reminders about his work. None of it meant anything. That it was all in his familiar block-print meant everything.

I have a need to convey okayness. We are all okay. We are grieving, but we are okay. We are quietly, methodically treading.

I have a need to be a mess. I need to let a memory wash over me so completely that it takes me several minutes of crying to realize I am completely without tissues. Again. And I don’t care.

I want to be overly dramatic. I want to wail and carry on like the only girl in the history of daughterhood that has ever lost her father. I want to thrash about in the water, flailing my arms and gasping until someone drags me out by my hair.

And I want to be invisible. The people who don’t know the entire world has changed for us, I don’t want them to see me. Because I don’t want to answer a friendly, generic ‘how are you?’ Not with a friendly, generic answer. And not with the ‘I don’t know’ truth. And, for their sake, especially not with a messy, flailing fit.

About the only thing I don’t want to be is quiet. Here, anyway. Writing is my ‘out.’ I try to balance that against how very private my father was, my mother is. I write everything, even the post about his death, in a me-centric way–not because I was the center of his story, but because he wouldn’t have wanted to be the center of mine, of this one.

So. I don’t know what I’m doing. Don’t even really know what I’m writing.

Just going to keep doing whatever this is until the next thing to do. Just going to keep writing whatever this is until the next thing to write.

Just going to keep treading.

Fantasizing here and there about a flailing, thrashing fit.

But treading.

I lost my voice, Sisterhood. It started in March, a hoarseness, a rawness when trying to express some words, some thoughts, and I discovered that it . . . → Read More: That Glad Morning]]> Some glad morning when this life is o’er,
I’ll fly away;
To a home on God’s celestial shore,
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away).

I lost my voice, Sisterhood. It started in March, a hoarseness, a rawness when trying to express some words, some thoughts, and I discovered that it was easier–on my voice, on my ears–to just stop talking the non-essential words. To sort it out quietly. Then, in mid-April, I lost my voice completely.

Not my voice-voice. My here-voice. My to you voice.

I just . . . I don’t know, went out and began digging in my yard instead. I didn’t need a voice to haul brick and rock, to dig and till and rake and mulch and plant and sod. So I hauled and dug and tilled and raked and mulched and planted and sodded. More often than not, I did those things at the direction of The MotherSuch, she being a landscaping pro and me being the opposite. Together we hauled and dug and tilled and raked and mulched and planted and sodded.

As I toiled in the yard, a mountain of OtherSuch material piled up–jury duty questionnaires, Four-Why-Ohisms, ovary reports, courtroom verdicts, doctor appointments, illness, photos, the weird and funny randoms and life, stuff. Stuff that I was beginning to feel some pressure about getting back to the computer to share. But stuff that ultimately? Doesn’t matter. It will soon enough be covered over by other stuff anyway. That’s what life does: it layers stuff over the other stuff over the other stuff. That’s po’try, right there, in the stuff layering. Be sure to credit the source when you quote me about The Layering of The Stuff.

Most evenings I came in too exhausted for much other than a shower, a little food, and bed. No energy, no brainpower, for writing. And when my body began to adjust, began storing up late-night writing energy? Then I added a 5:00 a.m. bootcamp into the mix. And was then so exhausted that had I wanted to think, to write, it all just would have come out like: zebra-pantsuit trophy juror skurgles what zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I said I lost my voice. But really? It wasn’t lost. I just didn’t want to use it. I was avoiding it, directing energy everywhere else that I could. My heart didn’t want to see in black and white what was in my head. And if I stayed away from a keyboard, if I kept my hands busy elsewhere, then my fingers would not have the opportunity to collude with my head and force me to unpackage and examine things that I just didn’t want to unpackage and examine.

There would be plenty of time for unpackaging and examining after all of the hauling and digging and tilling and raking and mulching and planting and sodding.

I came in from watering the new flowerbeds this morning and sat down, trying to figure out where I would start, and discovered that the unpackaging, the examining, well I had already done those things after all. In the yard. I don’t need to go back over the last two months here. I stood looking out my windows, watching the sprinklers cast droplets over two months’ worth of The Stuff. It was already out there.

I had hauled The Stuff out there rock by rock, brick by brick, and laid it out. I’d dug into it, sometimes with a hand tool, sometimes by hopping up and down on a large shovel, wedging the tool down into the hard, compacted parts and breaking large sections free at a time. I had tilled over all of it, ripping up roots and working desirable soil in with the undesirable parts. I had raked it all smooth(ish) and level(ish). I had mulched over it, a pretty cover to help keep the weeds at bay and to encourage new plant life. I had come back and dug new holes, carefully moving aside the mulch, planting new and pretty things to draw my focus forward, away from The Stuff.

The unpackaging and examining, I have already done it. Most of it, anyway.

Thank God I have already been doing that after all.

*     *     *     *     *

Last Friday evening, we had a gathering of friends to our home. We grilled out burgers and hot dogs, enjoying a beautiful spring evening on the patio while our little ones, ten or so of them, ran about the yard giggling and shouting and making gleeful children noises. It was a wonderful, peaceful evening among good friends.

After everyone had gone, after our completely worn-out child had gone to bed, I asked my husband if he would take her with him to breakfast in the morning, let me sleep in. I might have prefaced the request with something like “because it’s Mother’s Day weekend and all . . . .” Not that I had to preface it that way, Saturday morning breakfasts being something they do, just the two of them, once a month or so anyway. Still, just in case he had other morning plans, I used my Mother’s Day leverage.

I sort of slept in the next morning. Mainly, I just stayed still and lightly snoozed while the two of them got themselves ready to leave. I didn’t really crack an eye until I heard her happy “‘Bye Mama!” and the close of the door. Then, the coast was clear for me. No pending breakfast orders! Quiet house! All alone!

I bunched the covers around me, propped up on the pillows, and spent at least an hour reading, catching up on games on my phone, scrolling through Facebook, checking messages and emails and voicemail.

At 9:50, angling to cash in on a little more of whatever Mother’s Day points I had, I sent The Husband a text asking if he would return a call about showing a rental property.

At 10:00, when he hadn’t replied, I sent a “??” followup to him. “Give me a few minutes,” came the reply. That was as good as a “yes” for me, so back to my reading and games and lazing I went.

Around 10:40, as I was washing my face and brushing my teeth and planning a call to my mother to see if she wanted to go plant shopping, I heard the garage door raising. When The Husband came strolling into the bathroom without a 40-pound shadow dancing behind him, I figured The Four-Why-Oh had met up with her grandfather and I had scored an afternoon of me-time. I don’t think I outwardly danced a jig, but I might have.

“Where’s my girl?”

“She’s running around with Pa.”

Ahhhhh! Me-time! We time?

“What are we going to do?”

“Well, I need to talk to you about something . . . .”

I continued fussing with contacts or hair or some manner of readying myself for my unexpected, and welcome, me-day. “Okay. Did you call that lady about showing the house?“

“I’ve been at your Mom and Dad’s house, your Mom called and asked me to come.”

And I knew.

The motion of my limbs ceased, my heart too I think, and for the first time since he had walked into the bathroom I looked at my husband’s face. At his eyes.

I knew everything I needed to know to deny everything he was standing before me to tell me.

“No. No. No, no, no. Just, NO.”

And I walked into the water closet and shut the door, shut him out entirely for a few moments.

“This is not funny,” I told him through the door, willing him to be messing with me so that I could divert the approaching monsoon of emotion, knowing this was not a matter about which he would ever joke. Wishing, wishing that it was.

“No,” I told him again when I emerged.

He stood, watching me, waiting for me, letting me stop him for as long as I needed him to not say the words he didn’t want to say and that I didn’t want to hear.

 “Are you telling me that my Daddy died? Because no.”

His eyes. This man, the one from whom I have to so often drag words. This once, wanting him to just keep all of the rest of the words to himself.

“Yes. Shelby, I am so sorry.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I told him, giving him one more opportunity to change the story, scrambling with futile hope for an out, a loophole, a way to make the news that I’ve known for 15-months was coming just not be coming today.

When I had finally used up all of my noes and denials, he answered my questions, watched as I tossed random toiletries into a bag, waited for me to crumble into him. Which I did. And then I didn’t. And then I did again. All in the span of about 90 seconds.

Oh, my father. Oh, my Father. Too soon! This is too soon!

In late March, scans had shown that his cancer was active again. A variety of doctor appointments and a handful of small procedures had shown us that there was not a whole lot that could be done medically.

We have lived the last 15 months with the knowledge that a goodbye loomed before us.

We have lived the last 15 months on a roller coaster of treatments and waiting for treatments and scans and waiting for scan results. In the fall we had the most beautiful of reprieves when for a time the cancer was inactive, the tumor having shrunk, his energy and health in general improving such that our family could do things (things! actual things! non-doctor-appointmenty things!) together. We celebrated Thanksgiving with great thankfulness for the grace that had brought us that time of comfort and healing.

We have lived the last 15 months knowing that goodbye was coming, and yet saying but not today! Today we will hold on, today we will love!

Oh, but Sisterhood, “today” had finally come.

It was too soon.

If it had been 10 years from now, it would have been too soon.

Thirty years from now, too soon.

Oh, my father. Oh, my Father.

Were I to try to explain, to honor the man in the way that he most assuredly deserved, I would never ever be able to close this post. He was truth and goodness and loyalty. He was humble and quiet and patient.

“‘Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands,’” my mother read to me yesterday evening from 1Thessalonians 4:11. That is what my father did.

He loved his Lord, his family, his friends, and he went about quietly doing good, we agreed.

As I stood in the back room of a funeral home this weekend, I tried to memorize his face. I watched my mother and my sister, knew they were struggling to do the same. Remember the shape of his brow, the bump in his nose where his glasses rested, I told myself. Commit these to your memory now so that they cannot escape!

As I looked upon my father’s face for the very last time I would ever do so on this earth, the words of his favorite hymn played through my mind. I cried, and the words played on. I found my voice, if for no purpose other than to sing, through tears, with faith, these words.

Some glad morning when this life is o’er, 
I’ll fly away; 
To a home on God’s celestial shore, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away). 

I’ll fly away, Oh Glory 
I’ll fly away; (in the morning) 
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away). 

When the shadows of this life have gone, 
I’ll fly away; 
Like a bird from prison bars has flown, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away) 

I’ll fly away, Oh Glory 
I’ll fly away; (in the morning) 
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away). 

Just a few more weary days and then, 
I’ll fly away; 
To a land where joy shall never end, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away).

I’ll fly away, Oh Glory 
I’ll fly away; (in the morning) 
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by, 
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away). 

That glad morning, his glad morning, was Saturday, May 12, 2012.

And on that morning, he flew away.

Oh Glory, my Daddy flew away.

They are beautiful.

And upon discovery of a patch or a field of them, a Texan is required to grab her child or a spouse or a parent or a pet or a whatever (rumor: friend of a friend, . . . → Read More: She, He, Me = We in the Texas Blues]]> There’s this thing about Texas bluebonnets in the spring.

They are beautiful.

And upon discovery of a patch or a field of them, a Texan is required to grab her child or a spouse or a parent or a pet or a whatever (rumor: friend of a friend, being as yet kidless, placed her favorite bottled beverage among the bluebonnets for photos) and GO TAKE PICTURES IN THE BLUES.

It’s a law.

Practically.

Which I try to obey. Except I haven’t every year.  Which I admit at great risk to my state citizenship status.

I want to be a good citizen.

And I want to be a good mother.

Even if it means handing the camera over to The FourWhyOh.

But sometimes it’s just so . . .

Other Such.

So wonderfully, perfectly Other Such.

I am an experienced fretter, have perfected it into an art form. You cannot out-fret me. Well, I don’t know–maybe you could. Really, there are no winners in a . . . → Read More: “Well, that was a nightmare,” said The Lady of OtherSuch Manor]]> I fretted about the replacement of the old desktop, Old Deller. Almost a month ago, I fretted about it to you.

I am an experienced fretter, have perfected it into an art form. You cannot out-fret me. Well, I don’t know–maybe you could. Really, there are no winners in a fret-off, so probably let’s don’t get into a competition about it. Plus, I don’t want you to lose. Then you’d just have something else to fret about. And then in my winningdom I’d start slacking and you’d have a come-from-behind fret-upset. Upfretset?

I made it two sentences into this post before my train of thought jumped three tracks over and headed off in the direction of Nowhere. Man, it’s good to be back in The OtherSuch!

Anyway. Usually, I cloak my fretting in “research” or “analysis” or “thorough evaluation of all options/possibilities.” And usually my researching/analyzing/thorough-evaluating is disproportionate to the actual threat about which I fret. But not always.

I don’t know that I’d say I was “right” to have fretted about replacement of the desktop, but I was certainly right about the possibility for it to become a nightmare of colossal proportions. It went like this:

Several days of research after which I settled on ordering a Dell Inspiron One 2320. The previous desktop was a Dell and I could not have been more pleased with it. I was happy to return to Dell. I was excited about the all-in-one Inspiron One system because the no-separate-tower design would free up space under the kitchen’s built-in desk, whereupon would be situated My Portal To The OtherSuch Chronicling. The touch-screen wasn’t a big selling point to me, but if I’m understanding what I’ve read, touch systems will be more useful after the upcoming release of Windows 8. (That’s a big “IF” preceding the “I’m understanding.”)

Out of the box, The Replacement (as I came to call her) was sleek. And her screen was HUGE compared to the one to which I was accustomed. With a rental renovation in progress, it took me a couple of days to find the time to actually set her up but that process, once begun, was pretty easy-peasy. She even walked me through the steps involved in transferring all of Old Deller’s data to my portable hard drive for copying over onto The Replacement. The lobotomy-like procedure took all of one night and an untold number of hours the next day while I was back working on the rental, but all of my data made the leap. I think. I thought.

Then, the problem: images (photos, websites) displayed on The Replacement’s screen had an unnatural yellowish hue. Kind of like the photos had already been edited in Photoshop and a sunshine filter applied. Which, in a way, made some of the photos look better. Except, how I was seeing them on my screen is not how you would be seeing them on yours. Unless maybe your computer screen had the same problem.

So, I tried to calibrate the screen colors. No luck.

So, I spent over an hour on the phone with technical support. No luck.

Technical support suggested that the problem was with the images and not the screen. But I had checked the images on my iPhone and iPad. By a vote of two-to-one, the problem was with The Replacement’s screen. To drive home the point to technical support, I set a raw/unedited photo up as the desktop background on The Replacement, connected Old Deller’s screen to an output on the back of The Replacement, and duplicated The Replacement’s background onto Old Deller (same image, same source file, shown on two screens). And thus was this–on the left is Old Deller, on the right is The Replacement:

Now . . . I’ll readily agree that the raw image looks better on The Replacement than it did on Old Deller, where it has a white/washed out appearance. But? The one on the left is a true representation of the unedited image. If I send that photo for printing, I could expect it to look in paper form like the screen on the left, not the one on the right. If I edit that photo in Photoshop using The Replacment’s screen, I have no way of knowing what the final product will actually look like.

It’s not just photos of my family that I care about–photos for the rental property advertisements that I prepare for the StephenvilleForRent.com website are important, too. I want to make sure that the photos I post are accurate representations of the properties. Again, the left is Old Deller, the right is The Replacement:

The image on the left accurately reflects the interior colors of that house. The yellow on the right is quite a bit off and is a problem. The reds are off, too, though less noticeably.

By my count, that put the vote at four-to-one that the problem was with The Replacement’s screen.

So, Dell sent a technician to my house a few days later to change the screen.

When he arrived, I had a functional system with a yellow screen.

By the time he was done, I had a system that would boot to blank, black nothingness. The new screen installed on The Replacement was in some manner not compatible with the system (some cable didn’t match up internally) so the entire screen stayed black. I could access nothing. Even with Old Deller’s screen still connected, could see nothing.

Panic began creeping in.

Before the technician left, he had me on the phone with Dell technical support who had graciously decided that because the system was less than a week old and should not be having these problems, they would just send a new system and have me return The Replacement to them. The Replacement’s Replacement should arrive within 7-10 days, I was told.

Panic. All data locked inside a machine with a black screen.

Then, less panic, remembering that I could probably call Old Deller out of retirement, strip a few more programs off of her and buy another week or so out of her.

But not no panic, just less panic.

The Husband called Dell back and convinced them to ship The Replacement’s Replacement a little faster. Seven-to-ten days of living with a fretful wife was panicking him, perhaps.

When it arrived, I was hopeful. Or maybe, more accurately, I wanted to be hopeful. Except that in the meantime I had Googled on the iPad a variety of searches related to “Dell Inspiron One 2320 yellow screen” and had learned my initial problem was not unique. I mean, Google had heard of it. More than once. There were forums.

I went through the initial setup for The Replacement’s Replacement, but stopped short of the full-on data transfer. As it was I already had all of my data trapped in The Replacement and wasn’t sure how, if at all, I would be able to remove the data before shipping it back when I couldn’t see anything at all on the screen.

So, no data transfer yet. Instead, a screen test. I had somehow had the foresight before The Replacement’s demise to email the two test images to myself. I connected Old Deller’s screen to The Replacement’s Replacement, opened the test images, set them as the desktop background, and

SAME EXACT YELLOW PROBLEM.

Another call to Dell and they helped me wipe my data off (I hope, anyway) of The Replacement and we returned both computers. At some point, they offered The Husband some small amount ($50?) to just keep The Replacement’s Replacement; he declined. They raised their offer ($90?); he declined. Seriously: accurate representation of colors on the screen is a big deal to me. Perhaps it wouldn’t be if I was primarily or exclusively using documents and spreadsheets, but I’m not and so it is.

The following weekend we made a trip to Big Electronics Store to check out a few other all-in-one models. They happened to have a floor model of the Dell Inspiron One 2320. I fired that Dell up and navigated to the StephenvilleForRent.com website where the image in that second comparison above was posted in a then-active listing (the property has since leased, so the photo has been archived). And guess what?

SAME EXACT YELLOW PROBLEM.

Based on my experiences, I feel completely comfortable in asserting that there is some kind of design flaw/defect in the screen of the Inspiron One 2320 model. And if color accuracy is important to you, I strongly encourage you to stay away from that model until Dell remedies the problem with its screen. Three for three, people–all with the same yellow issue. That’s not a fluke. And as much as I would prefer not to have negative feedback about a product, in this case it is warranted: the machine was not cheap, the down time was not negligible. I really liked Dell before; but I was really not pleased with this model.

On the upside, the Dell return policy has so far been fairly straightforward. But, you know, having to use it–and use it TWICE–is a big downside to even that upside.

And so it is that after another round of fretting and researching and despairing and wondering if writing on the cave wall is going to come back in style like skinny jeans and leggings, I finally sought solace in the arms of the HP TouchSmart 520.

I’m afraid to love her yet. Haven’t named her yet, just in case she turns out to be The Replacement’s Replacement’s Replacement. But I think she’s going to stick around. Her colors are true. Which, you know, kind of made me dance a little. Once I resumed breathing. Because I was totally holding my breath while she ran her initial setup and I waited to open that email with the test images.

Plus, I kind of feel like she and I already have a connection on account of her initials are HPTS, you know, like HPTs. (Come on, you know, like: home pregnancy tests.) And probably I’ve used somewhere in the vicinity of 519 HPTs (give or take, obvs) in the last half decade. So, that she would be numbered 520 of the HPTS I’ve brought home? OtherSuch fitting.

She could only be more meant for me if instead of the round little HP logo, she’d shown up with a uterus engraved on the edge of her screen casing. Or two ovaries. Or two ovaries plus an ugly, hairy ol’ cyst. That’s a story for another day.

But until then, maybe I should confess that I threw the hairy thing in there for effect. I don’t think ovarian cysts actually have hair.

If viewed on The Replacement’s Replacement’s screen, though? I’m quite sure they’d be yellow.

 ————————-

***Edited to add: I think Mr. Wizard is correct in his comment that one of the differences between the coloration shown on the two Dell screens is attributable to the type of screen. Old Deller was LCD; The Replacements were LED. Without a lick of technical knowledge about back lighting or color temperature (no really–my formal training is in cervical dialoguing and salsa-making), it makes perfect sense to me that images would not be exact duplicates when the type of screen is different. What I do know is this: the HP screen (which is also LED) is a happy compromise between the overly-cool tones of Old Deller (that I often tried to correct through Photoshop as I think the coolness was likely equally a camera issue) and the way-too-overly-warm-for-my-eyeballs tones of The Replacements.

Apparently there’s a even a guy named Kelvin somewhere who monitors the temperatures of colors. Mr. Wizard teaches me new things all the time. (Or tries, at least!)

I wish I’d thought to snap a photo with my phone when I had all three monitors set up, before The Replacements were shipped back to Dell. For one, all those monitors squeezed onto the little kitchen desk space had a real how-many-clowns-can-she-fit-in-that-car effect. For two, the side-by-side comparison would have said it better than me. (I did not just admit that. No picture is worth the 2,081 words with which I can belabor this post. For real: 2,081. Before that last sentence anyway. Now: 2,091.)

The best I can do now is a screen shot with the Dell comparison photo overlaid on the HP’s background image. (Not quite the same because the HP image isn’t filtered through the iPhone, but there are only so many layers of crazy I can stage today.) I haven’t asked Kelvin, but I think the HP has a nice, normal 98.6 temperature. Color me satisfied. 

She did tell me late last night, as I snuggled down on her purple-blanket-pallet with her (this pallet phase isn’t passing nearly as quickly as I had hoped), and as she wrapped her hand around my neck and moved her face close to . . . → Read More: The Four-Why-Oh (and Rerun: OS:S in the E-T on the 4/1/12)]]> Well, it’s here: the day my Three-Why-Oh becomes my Four-Why-Oh.

She did tell me late last night, as I snuggled down on her purple-blanket-pallet with her (this pallet phase isn’t passing nearly as quickly as I had hoped), and as she wrapped her hand around my neck and moved her face close to mine to position herself for squeezing every possible ounce of gooey motherly love out of my heart: “We could cancel my birthday and I could stay three for one more day. But just one more, mama. Then the day after that I’ll be four.”

I considered the offer. Thought back on everything we had packed into her last day of Threeness. Thought specifically about how that last day had started:

It was before 9am. I was watering a plant on the patio. I half-turned and discovered her about 10 feet off of the patio in the yard, pajama shorts and Dora undies around her ankles, hands on her Croc-clad feet for balance, bootie arched out away from her, hair inverted and wild like a troll doll’s just grazing the grass . . . and she was watering the yard. You know: watering the yard.

My mouth hung open and I just stood there, watching her. We aren’t the most graceful girls and I didn’t want to say something and startle her into falling into her own puddle.

She finished, was pulling her clothes up, saw me gaping, and giggled: “I wanted to try tee-teeing in the yard like [The Other Valley Girl's little boy]! It was FUN!”

It’s been a little over a month since we were in The Other Valley. A little over a month since she saw how her younger friend got to go outside to sprinkle on the grass to help him with his potty training. (Point of clarification: she didn’t see him sprinkling, just knew that’s what he was going outside to do.) She’s been thinking about this for a little over a month, I guess. I never saw it coming.

The Three-Why-Ohness, it has entertained us.

In the last week I have:

• had to set ground rules about how her imaginary friends are not allowed to shower with me (creepy little peepers);
• maneuvered through complex negotiations centering on four bites of green beans and four bites of mashed potatoes . . . that she gagged on, four times (but really, come on: who gags on mashed potatoes?!?);
• spent all day baking in the kitchen for her “kite party” only to be grilled before kitchen cleanup could begin about what we could make for her “number five birthday”;
• read Jack and the Beanstalk more times than I wanted to because the giant’s “I smell a delicious greasy boy!” line makes her belly laugh in that way that freezes out every single other thing in the world except for the sound of her happiness;
• crept into her room, prayed over her head, kissed her hair, rubbed her cheek . . . just like I’ve done on so many of the last 1,461 nights; and
• had a conversation about using the indoor potties when they’re available, complete with discussion of every exception she could imagine (if we’re in a field and there aren’t potties; if the tee-tees are in a big hurry and can’t wait to get inside; if she’s playing in the sprinkler; and if the grass is really, really thirsty).

Three-Why-Oh set the bar super-de-duper high. “Higher than the highest tall tree on the top of the North Pole at the tippity top of the Earth.”

Now commences the part where we wonder whether Four-Why-Oh can measure up.

Followed by the part where we wonder how we ever could have wondered if it would.

The Week in The Other Valley recuperating.

Computer dying.

Doctor appointmenting.

Phone dramaing.

Computer consultant consulting.

Computer replacement searching.

Computer replacement ordering.

Rental house refinished countertop projecting.

Rental house countertop project delaying.

Rental house other projecting.

Draw Something-ing.

36-hour virusing.

More doctoring, negative flu testing, not-the-flu-but-flulike-symptoms suffering.

36-hour . . . → Read More: The Last Two Weeks –>Ing<– The Next Two Weeks]]> Week in The Other Valley vacationing.

The Week in The Other Valley recuperating.

Computer dying.

Doctor appointmenting.

Phone dramaing.

Computer consultant consulting.

Computer replacement searching.

Computer replacement ordering.

Rental house refinished countertop projecting.

Rental house countertop project delaying.

Rental house other projecting.

Draw Something-ing.

36-hour virusing.

More doctoring, negative flu testing, not-the-flu-but-flulike-symptoms suffering.

36-hour recovering.

Four-year-old birthday party invitation crafting.

Rental house painting, cleaning, miniblinding, weeding.

New computer arriving.

Thunderstorming.

Timing of new computer setup debating.

Chronic insomniaing.

Draw Somethinging.

Words With Friending.

Scrambling.

Dice With Friending.

Every serious mistake I’ve ever made remembering.

Self-flagellating.

Abundance of blessings notwithstanding, counting.

Humbling.

Sleep giving upping.

—–>WE ARE HERE<—–

New computer setupping.

Hopefully no data loss during file transferring.

Scrounging for necessary software CDs for reinstalling.

Rental house countertop refinishing (day 1 of 2).

. . . ing (Day 2 of 2).

Stack of bills paying.

Hysteroscopying.

Frozen embryo transfer cycle contemplating.

Frozen embryo transfer cycle delaying?

Maybeing.

Child’s birthdaying.

Eastering.

Comatose COLLAPSING.

OtherSuch chronicling

resuming.

Hoping.

Multiple text convos with Mr. OtherSuch have gone like this:

Me: [Garden variety question.]

He: [No response after appropriate amount of time.]

. . . → Read More: It Rains, It iPours]]> My phone has been eating calls and texts for about six weeks. Randomly. Just when it’s hungry, I think. Hungry for wreaking havoc.

Multiple text convos with Mr. OtherSuch have gone like this:

Me: [Garden variety question.]

He: [No response after appropriate amount of time.]

Me: ???

He: [Still no response.]

Me: ????????? + little-red-faced-emoticon

He: [Nothing.]

Me, calling him to get to the bottom of his disregard for me: “Why don’t you answer me? Do you not love me anymore? Why don’t you love me anymore?!!!!???”

He: “Woman, I answered you three times already. It’s your phone.”

Me: “Ah. Oh. Huh. Oops. Okay. So . . . what’d you say?”

Then there are all the texts I didn’t get, to which I couldn’t respond, because I didn’t know about them, and I am HAUNTED BY THE GHOSTS OF CONVERSATIONS MISSED.

About the same time the iSocialSabotage began, the desktop started gently notifying me that it is ready to retire. Warning messages about low disk space began appearing.

The Desktop and I have been through a lot together in the last six-or-so years. She predates The Child, has seen me through multiple bookkeeping programs, houses a ton of documents of a legal/financial/rental nature, and holds over 15,000 photos taken since Sophie Belle was born. I know why she’s tired, but I’m not ready for her to retire. And I know she’s a she because hello, always-on-duty workhorse.

So I deleted some unused programs, bought us some more time. Compressed everything compressable to salvage some space. Deleted unnecessary files for a few more moments.

Then, last night, she told me that it’s time. After the latest program and file deletion, she’s down to less than 100MB of space. She can’t even edit a photo because there isn’t enough free memory. She barely had the energy to tell me she’s fading. I thought briefly about setting the document and photo files to be saved only on the external drive, to free up another bit of room. I don’t want her to go! Except for that virus incident a couple years ago (which totally wasn’t her fault) we’ve had a fantastic relationship. Mr. OtherSuch told me, as I scrolled through the list of potentially-deleteable programs, that I’m just delaying the inevitable.

He’s probably correct.

But he doesn’t love her like I do. Hasn’t cried over her keyboard during a midnight writathon, come *this close* to spitting water on her monitor when a laugh caught him by surprise, fussed for countless hours to reconcile financial statements or wondered how a child could possibly be as beautiful as the one in the Photoshop workscreen.

I don’t want her to retire. And I dread replacing her. But I guess I should, before I lose her in the middle of a senten—-.

Like that. That would be a bad goodbye.

So. Desktop shopping. From The Desktop. Which feels kind of traitorous. Except, I guess, that if she didn’t want me to be interviewing candidates for her replacement she wouldn’t have turned in her notice. She’d have just walked out one day.

I’m more than a lot concerned about data transfer to a new desktop. Everything is backed up (I think. I hope.) to the external drive. I’ve wondered in recent months whether I should also be uploading to a data storage service. (Anyone use one of those? Carbon*ite or something similar?)

But wouldn’t you know? I’ve been consumed since yesterday evening with making the final preparations for my dear friend, and who do you think gets jealous?

iPhone.

It was sitting on a nightstand, hadn’t been touched all morning and hadn’t even had the ringer turned on yet. (I try not to un-silence it before 9am; the quiet time is nice.) Then The MotherSuch called. I picked it up to answer just as it transitioned from a ringing buzz to a constant, minute-long buzzing seizure, feeling in my hand like a junebug trying frantically to make its escape. And then it died. Dead. Dead, dead.

iUGH.

I tried charging. I tried rebooting. I tried ignoring. I prepared for a trip to the iDoctor. The Desktop gathered all of her available resources to help me Google for a solution. “Hard reboot” they all said.

So I kept trying to reboot. A dozen times. Fourteen. Sixteen.

The eighteenth reboot attempt worked. Seventeen identical attempts and then it decided to revive just as randomly as it had decided to die.

Stinking iDrama.

That’s the problem with young technology these days. It wants to be loved and appreciated instantly, doesn’t want to be troubled with earning respect. iEntitlement Syndrome.

So.

Immature phone.

Aged computer.

One needs a timeout, the other wants a timeout.

Tuesday. I had intended to spend today, the first day of complete at-homeness in over a week, to work on The Child’s birthday invitations and edit photos for a rental advertisement.

Not to be, apparently.

Not to be.

Instead I’ll be somberly interviewing The Desktop’s successor while mollycoddling the iPhone.

It rains, it iPours.

We’ve handled it well, I think.

I’ve handled it well, I think.

There was some tearfulness earlier on, around the post-pregnancy hormone-dump mark.

There always is.

We’d never told our . . . → Read More: This She, That She, We]]> Just over a month has passed since . . . well, since.

We’ve handled it well, I think.

I’ve handled it well, I think.

There was some tearfulness earlier on, around the post-pregnancy hormone-dump mark.

There always is.

We’d never told our Sophie Belle about the baby, so there was no untelling there.

I wrote about untelling in a prior post somewhere, about how it’s a non-issue for me. And it is, when it’s you. But it wouldn’t be if I had to untell my daughter.

For one, her supply of “whys” beats my supply of “becauses” by about infinity. For two, see “for one.”

So for her, unburdened by the could-have-been-but-wasn’t, one normal day has followed another has followed another. Some normal days she’s had a melancholic mama. Some normal days she’s had an overly kissy-huggy-snuggly mama. Some normal days we’ve stayed in pajamas until it was time to change into fresh pajamas. Some normal days we’ve been up just after the sun, chasing full tilt after our shadows. Normal.

Not many of these normal days have been spent here, on the retelling of the OtherSuch. Or so it seems to me. I miss my outlet. Sometimes. Often. We converse all the time in my head, you and me. Normal.

On one of these normal days, I helped her get dressed all “fancy” for a date with her Daddy. She picked out a poufy dress, one good for twirling. Because in her world, a date would involve twirling. And a crazy hat. And a scarf. And a beaded necklace. (She stopped short of asking for my fake eyelashes. Next time.) He rang the bell, presented her with a rose, asked for permission to take her out, promised to treat her like a lady and return her home before long. I tried to get their picture. I succeeded in capturing her native state in most of the shots,

before she ran and skipped and twirled down the sidewalk as the only snow we’ve had all season fell around her. Normal.

The normal day following that she and I pulled on leggings-under-jeans with shirts-under-sweaters-under-sweatshirts with hats and gloves and scarves

and went out to play as the last of the ice/snow melted away. She made the shortest snowish man I’ve ever seen,

and chased me around the yard with balls of ice/snow until we were out of breath, her knit gloves soaked from the melted ice, her cheeks

rosy from the cold and the effort and the giggles. Normal.

One normal afternoon not long thereafter had us, me and she, talking him, our he, into home pedicures for us, we three. Touching someone else’s feet is something I don’t do. But I did. Because I heart him. He was surprised enough by the gesture, amused enough by her giggles, that he permitted me to paint his toes. And then he painted hers. And then she painted mine. Our thirty toes

matching, sort of. Our bathroom echoing with the beautiful harmony of laughter. Normal.

A few normal days later, the followup with Dr. Bigger Picture. The “what we learned from the post-D&C tissue testing” appointment. And what we learned? The baby’s karyotyping revealed Trisomy 22, a chromosomal disorder that occurs when there are three copies of the 22nd chromosome instead of just two copies. Trisomies are not uncommon; however, while some trisomies are “compatible with life,” it is very rare for a baby with Trisomy 22 to survive the first trimester. Random. There is no more reason to expect that it could happen again than there is to expect that it wouldn’t. And so we got an answer, of sorts, and a piece of paper to reassure us (me) that there is nothing that we (I) could have done to prevent it, nothing we could have done to correct it, no way to have carried her to term.

Her. Her. Not he, like I’d thought. She. Normal. Abnormal. Which, you know, our normal.

So we did what we do. We do what we do. We move onward.

We busy our minds (here, with the freedom of pretend).

We busy our hands (here, with the hauling of rocks and bricks and gravel and the digging of our dirt).

We busy our hearts (here, now, always . . . with each other).