April showers

It did not rain today. It was a beautiful day of blue skies and delightful sunshine.





(Let's ignore for a minute the fact that it was unbelievably cold -- 37 for a high. In April.) I was, however, thinking of 'showers,' in that it's 'raining' in my backyard right now and I just hope all that rain produces a host of lovely flowers down the road.

My rain isn't of the wet kind. It's raining problems. A parental death, complicated travels, work upheavals -- and that was just last week.

Today I take rosie to work. It's below freezing when I set out, but I want to ride her anyway. To experience the calm I feel when I take her out on an empty country road.

But rosie is low on gas. So after work, I pull in to a gas station and boom! Another credit card denial. I have two cards -- one for travel, one for life; the travel one was hacked. And now this one?

Indeed. It turns out that I am a victim of identity theft. That is a far, far greater problem than a "mere" theft of a credit card number. It means someone out there has my vital info -- social security number, d.o.b., mother's maiden name -- all of it. And they're running around pretending to be me. And they have done a lot of damage: changed my address and phone number, made charges of course - I'm only now finding out the extent of damage and it could be months (years?) before the other "me" is stamped out.

Imagine. Why would anyone this week want to be me?

I'll say this -- you wont see me banging my head against a wall asking  -- why me? Fact is, it is me (or, a copy of me) and now having established that, let's get on with addressing the problems that have arisen as a result.

So I spend the evening doing some damage control. We speculate as to how this may have happened given the fact that I never (repeat never) give out my vitals (like ss number) on email or elsewhere. Ed reminds me of ancient times when keeping this info private was nobody's concern. Indeed, there was a time when your student ID, proudly displayed at numerous points -- was your ss number. You never had to burden your memory with multiple numbers, passwords and user names. Your ss number was you. Until somewhere along the way identity theft entered into the picture.

I hadn't the time to cook tonight. Ed picks up take out Thai. Now, my eyes are reminding me that I'm still used to another clock and another set of hours.

But let me end on a different note and a different time of day: this morning, when I stepped out to assess the degree of "cold" in the air, I saw a deer in the frozen fields to the north of us. Not an unusual sight around these parts, but still, a beautiful one.





If I had the enrgy to take a photo now, it would be of my smile. At the recollection of that early morning sunshine and the deer caught in its glow.