Dog Story

 Everybody is talking about dogs nowadays, so here's a tale from the archives.

    One of the puppies, evidently intrigued by the colorful fly attached to Uncle Joe's fishpole which was kept in a corner of the barn, batted at it playfully and somehow got the fishhook inserted all the way through its front paw. It was yelping in pain and my mother cut the line from the pole and tried to pull the fishhook out of the pup's footpad, but true to its name, it was hooked, and firmly, with those multiple barbs not allowing it to be pulled back through. The fish was hooked.

   Back then, all unsolvable problems were taken to the front porch, and my mother in consult with Sara as to what to do. No success in backtracking the hook from the paw of the pup, who was now calm but crying piteously. Then a customer pulled up to the store, George Kagel's brother Herman. He quickly assessed the situation, went to his vehicle, retrieved a pair of pliers, snapped the protruding barbed section of the hook off, and then pulled the straight section out of the paw. Emergency medicine at its finest. The pup was back to normal.

   

Lake Placid.....

 ....someone mentions Lake Placid and my memory goes back, probably for the last time, back more than 50 years and a like number of pounds ago, back to before I was aged and decrepit. What I write here, since so much time has passed, can no longer be seen as self-aggrandizement, I hope and trust, but we, Barbara and I had the time of our lives. I so wish I could run this account by her one more time.

   I had spent that summer at Oneonta College, finishing up my Master's Degree. I had become friends with Dee, a student there, and later that winter she and 5 of her classmates had arranged a trip to Lake Placid and Dee asked if I would like to join them there. I did, and because I never liked to go anywhere alone, I invited Barbara. 

  We were all to meet at a designated hotel in the evening; there would be us eight girls. So Barbara and I set off in Dorothy's green Pontiac, as my car was having brake issues. We left in the evening and during a snowfall. The roads then were very rural, no highway, just dark and winding snow-filled country roads. And of course no phone or directional assistance. But we found the address, and stared, aghast. The hotel was on the edge of town, an isolated area in itself. But the huge spreading structure  looked deserted, dilapidated, eerie,and abandoned. In other words, which were both mine and Barbara's, almost exactly like the hotel in Psycho. It was late when we arrived, with slippery roads, so we knew the others would not arrive. We decided to look for other lodging for that first night. Back to town we drove, finding several motel units with no-vacancy signs, and at least two that had vacancy signs, but would not admit us. Someone told us later motels would not admit women late at night.Those times. Eventually we found a motel that agreed to let us in, but the unit had no heat. We stayed there anyway.

 The next day we drove to the haunted hotel on the hill and located the other girls there. They had just arrived, having not wanted to drive there in a snowstorm. Smarter than us. We did some usual day stuff there, I bought a handbag and then we discussed a place for dinner. Some girl suggested a Teahouse which we'd driven past, but I remember holding out for The Steakhouse, thinking that would hold more possibilities. That's where we went, a table for 8 girls. As luck would have it, our table was next to a table full of men, the entire Ottawa Police Force Hockey Team, which was scheduled to play a game that evening. I was sitting at the end of the table, by design,  and after we'd eaten one of the officers, Buddy, the best looking one at that, moved his chair to the edge of our table and offered me a cigarette. It was of a brand or type unknown to me,Canadian maybe,  but of course I accepted. As usual, I got the comment, "You don't smoke, do you?"  But he considered me a good sport to have tried and he invited me to their game, saying he'd leave 2 tickets in my name at the box office. Yay!

  And this is where my Taylor Swift moment transpired. I'd of course invited B, and as we started to find our seats, in the packed arena, the Canadian team was already lined up  on the ice just before the game started, and the whole team greeted me by name. Afterwards, Dee's friends told her they thought her new friends were"fast" or maybe worse because we took  off with strange men, even later going dancing in the next town, and, you know, getting to know each other. But, hey, they were police officers. B. had wild memories of having to defend her honor, but me, I always got the nice guy. We actually exchanged pictures and letters for almost a year, but when I didn't take him up on his invitations for me to visit him, the budding romance ended. Alas.

But back to Lake Placid. We also went to Whiteface Mountain and later took the Mt. Von Hoevenberg Bobsled run. The week before the bobsled carrying Miss Rhein-

gold had crashed and she was hospitalized,  so soon after that, they stopped running the bobsleds from the very top of the run. But we got the full run, where you wear a helmet and are snuggled in between a guy at the front who steered and a guy at the back who did whatever ruddering bobsleds do. Turned out the speed was such that the sled rides the side of the tunnel all the way down. All I saw and felt was flying ice.

  

   

    

   

Name Flub

 Yes, I had heard it right, but reaffirmed just now on repeat debate. At opening remarks, David Muir says to Kamala Harris, "You and President Trump were elected 4 years ago..." So President Biden would have been, and was, pounced upon for such a name flub, which are actually quite common. Ask any mother, who has most likely called her own children by the name of another.   But don't make that mistake if you're an old person---the only fair game left in this country. As you can now observe.  Again.

The Ick List Part II

Sometimes attempts at resolution work; sometimes they don't.

1A) The furnace has had a dripping issue since the first time some yahoo attempted to clean it, why I don't know. He said I needed to replace the furnace though it was only  a few years old. Others disagreed and thereby hangs a carefully documented long and convoluted tale. The upshot being that the furnace still leaks. Documentation shows several analyses and different parts replacement, the latest just 2 weeks ago, where the tech  said last year's Josh replaced the wrong part and he now has it right. But no, there's still leakage

 . I recently saw a post from Grasshopper Heating with a reasonable offer to perform a 28 point heating evaluation. They deal with all home heating and air conditioning needs, they tout. So I called and left a message. When they called back, they said they do NOT do oil furnaces, only propane and electric. I might have expected such because last year when Josh was here and presumably fixed the issue, he said that recently graduated   HVAC workers are not trained on oil furnaces. Alas!  

2A)  In light of the issues about emergency ambulance service, and the plethora of reasons for a change in service areas, I called the provided number for the Valley Falls Village Board. The response I was given raised more questions as to "who do you call" so now I have 2 more follow-up ICKS. 

Newly Pending Icks:  (1B)  Dashboard light indicates low tire pressure---again!  (2B) As I enter this info, I have traced the chirping noise to smoke detector in hallway. I managed to remove the detector that's on the wall, but to no avail. There is another detector on the hallway ceiling. Climbing up to  it or reaching over my head may well put me in a position of having to reach out to1A above. 

Medical Terminology

Patient Portals are now prevalent and their use is encouraged by medical professionals. (Well, with one exception in my experience.) So the examining physician uses a brief, succinct descriptive word or phrase in describing their patient's physical appearance on presentation. I gather the descriptors are pretty much the same, medical language-wise. I recall my shock the first time I saw my husband's described as "Frail" and unfortunately that word showed up again and again.  I know another descriptor word for a patient's appearance is "Well-nourished."  Now I know that's an arbitrary commonly used  term indicating "no obvious physical issues,"  but to me it means FAT.

Is it M&M or M&N?

 For clearer understanding, use the Aviation Alphabet where M is for MIKE and N is for NOVEMBER. Because for help in differentiating M and N,  M  for MOOSE could be misheard as N for NOOSE.  

How to spend (waste) a day:

 Make a list of icky things you need to do and attempt to follow it, or at least reduce the number of tasks.

1) I've been locked out (again) of my online bank account. The double verification or whatever it's called is so tedious a process that when I locked myself out a month or so again, I didn't bother to try to log back in. Who needs it anyway, I can wait for the mailed paper statement.

   But I wanted to verify some  information on a check I had written, so decided the day had come for the log-in. I open the site, and the red banner tells me I can't log in because I'd had too many failed attempts; I think the forbidden  number is 3. So I follow the re-log-in directions on site, entering my bank card number, my magic number and the first 5 of my SSN. But the red banner reads I can't log in due to my past flubs, and that I need to call the bank, number provided. So I call the bank, go through the list of options and choose help with logging in. All the same info I enter again. Finally the robotic voice issues a code, orally, which my diminished hearing can not distinguish; the code is repeated, but still not clear.  So I go through the machinations again, entering all the numbers and choose the option to speak to a rep. I explain to her that I had received the code but was unable to decipher it. She provides me not with a new password, but with a new code. I am to receive it through email and read it back to her, and then she can give me the password to log in. I open my email and retrieve my code, but lose the connection to deliver it to her. My fault, I'm sure. So I call back, and once again have to go through entering all the numbers, account, debit card number, my first 5, and once again select the live person option. Eventually she asks me what code I had received. I tell her what I think it was, and learn I have transposed the letter "n" with the letter "m." I ask her to give me a word with beginning letter. Now I know "m" stands for MOOSE. I say if that feature had been on the robot voice, it would have prevented my problem. She was nice enough to stay on the line while I used the valuable log-in information. Success, and thank you very much.

2)  Back to my list of unpleasant, therefore put-off tasks. As a valued member of the AARP, I sometimes, usually in the dead of night or early morn, enter some of activities, trivia type games and accrue points, easily thousands of said points. Those points can be entered on various commercial sites for various prizes. No winner is the usual outcome. But last February I was the recipient of a $10 Gift Card redeemable at any Walgreens.  I had brought the card to the local store and the cashier asked the manager. He perused the Gift Card and said he had never seen nor heard of such an offering, suggesting  it might not be valid. Not wanting to embarrass anyone, including myself, I acknowledged his doubt and when I got home stuck the card in the to-do pile. 

  Today, clearing papers, I almost discarded  it, but then thought it's not much but would I throw away a $10 bill.  There is an AARP telephone number on the card for any problems, so I called it. After not too long a wait, I was connected with a live person. My only question: Is the card valid? But before the rep could answer the question, I had to provide all my info, pretty much the same as the Bank had asked. Then the rep told me that my membership had expired. A surprise to me and I told her so. She checked and came back, repeating the same. As did I. Then it came to her that there are sometimes duplicate memberships and she would check on that. She came back again. AHA moment. I had a duplicate membership and one had expired. Sometimes when renewing a membership process, whoever does whatever and it happens. She mentioned my husband's membership and on being informed that he was deceased, she needed to go to the file and whatever. She was pleasant and apologetic for the lengthy time it took, but finally said my membership is taken care of. OH, I said what about the Gift Card, that I'd called about. She went to check and said it's valid, try taking it to another Walgreen's. 

***ON one of the above calls, I was asked for verification purposes, the maiden name of my father's mother. I couldn't recall it. What, she says, you don't know the name of your own grandmother? I finally came up with it, sort of a guess. AND, I stayed civil.

Remembrances of Things Past

 No, not Proust. Just some vague reactive unconscious spasms bordering on the edge of thought.

   For example, if I'm on the computer late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, and for some reason on some site, sound suddenly blares out, I get the feeling it is disturbing the sleep of another. Just a flash, not really a thought.

   The other night, I was in the bedroom and happened to lie down on the bed, and unexpectedly fell asleep, or anyway almost asleep. I had left the tv on in the living room  and in my stage of sleep, or semi-sleep,  the murmur of  voices and muted sounds were oddly comforting, I suppose as reminiscent of other times when others were watching television after I had gone to bed.

 Maybe, after all, there is not that much distinction between what we perceive as our dream state and what we  call our waking hours. We're there for both, right?