What a strange day! Totally weird, in fact. You know how you sort of have a mental image of how the next day will be? Well I did and then kaboom! It turned out to be nothing, nothing like that. Just weird. Suffice it to say that Ed said "shit" about a dozen times today, which is perhaps more than I had heard out of his mouth in all the years that I've known him. He does not emote with the help of curse words, saving those for animated conversations which sometimes need a little edge to them to make a point.
The day's developments were just a tiny bit my fault. I woke up at 5 and finding Ed awake next to me and with the computer on, I said -- you know, I'm going to ask for your help with a problem I'm having with my computer. And I explained briefly what the issue is.
[For the techie readers who just can't wait for me to delve into a computer mystery, let me just say that it's a complicated story and has to do with how an Apple computer interfaces with Lightroom photo editing, and how that in turn interfaces with flickr, my photo storage site, and finally, and importantly, how that all interfaces with blogger, my blog hosting service. It turns out that when you take decisive action in one of these, it has consequences for all the rest. Since I have reached capacity on my laptop, I needed to move or delete photo files, triggering a tsunami of unanticipated events. I needed help in figuring some of them out.]
I had intended to leave this question dangling, like an idle thought that you mull over in your spare time, but in fact, Ed went to work on trying to solve just one small piece of the puzzle. In a short while, he told me he had it in hand.
But he didn't have it in hand. And in trying to backtrack and mend some steps he had taken, he managed to delete all photos from the year 2018. (This is where the ten shits were throw in.) As my daughter pointed out later -- ah, the year TWO of your grandchildren were born. Ooops.
The guy spent the rest of the day restoring files and learning how all these programs work together. Not being an Apple guy, or a Photoshop guy, or a flickr guy and certainly not a blogger guy, there was a lot that needed to be explained by me. And so we spent the day thus: him, trying to fix, understand, solve the underlying issues and repair my overstuffed computer problem, me, trying to explain all that I knew to assist in the process.
It was noon before we even toyed with the idea of whether to bother with breakfast.
(In the end, we bothered.)
In the afternoon, Ed continued with this work. I was less help then. I kept saying -- I can't do this now, I have to bake a cake!
And I did -- both have to bake and fix dinner, a somewhat special one because of Snowdrop's half year birthday. (She's five and a half today.)
If yesterday had many, many hours of outdoor work, this day had none. And perhaps that's a good thing: it was hot and steamy and now the bugs are starting to be really irritating, so all in all, nothing out there beckoned. Except maybe this (as seen on one of my quick saunters to feed the animals)...
Exploding day lilies!
Or this...
It felt odd to be so housebound. Not at all what I would expect on a sunny summer day. Ed, somewhat groggy from lack of sleep, kept at it, fixing, testing, trying to unravel the secrets of these programs that were messing terribly with my computer and looking for a solution going forward. Me, trying to keep up with dinner prep.
All this was bothersome enough, but then things got even more complicated. A friend called to tell me she was not well. So of course, you leap to the question -- is it CoVid? And yes, she will have been tested and she'll know in a few days, but she had one of those stories of many hours of waiting in the hot hot sun (despite feeling unwell) to procure a test and you sort of have to wonder -- why does every aspect of this pandemic have to be this hard?
Not everything about this day spelled trouble. In the evening, the young family was here for dinner and it was indeed the little girl's half birthday and though we don't typically make a fuss on half-a-year days, this year she did get a cake and a dinner of favorites out of me.
Five and a half.
(Just two)
(Not sure about those sparklers...)
(Even as her mommy loves them.)
Gaga, can I have a picture with you??
(Let's get Sparrow in on this...)
She was overjoyed and said many sweet things all evening long and honestly, seeing a happy child does bring you out of your own internal spin and so the evening ended late for me, for Ed, but it ended on an upnote on all fronts. Grandkids are happy, the computer issues are getting close to a solution, my friend is feeling a little better.
But my oh my, what a strange and electrifying day!
And the moon keeps shining as if nothing happened, as if it was just another July Buck Moon, shining brightly, letting us know that we are small potatoes in the scheme of things, that life goes on, no matter how weird the day may be.
The day's developments were just a tiny bit my fault. I woke up at 5 and finding Ed awake next to me and with the computer on, I said -- you know, I'm going to ask for your help with a problem I'm having with my computer. And I explained briefly what the issue is.
[For the techie readers who just can't wait for me to delve into a computer mystery, let me just say that it's a complicated story and has to do with how an Apple computer interfaces with Lightroom photo editing, and how that in turn interfaces with flickr, my photo storage site, and finally, and importantly, how that all interfaces with blogger, my blog hosting service. It turns out that when you take decisive action in one of these, it has consequences for all the rest. Since I have reached capacity on my laptop, I needed to move or delete photo files, triggering a tsunami of unanticipated events. I needed help in figuring some of them out.]
I had intended to leave this question dangling, like an idle thought that you mull over in your spare time, but in fact, Ed went to work on trying to solve just one small piece of the puzzle. In a short while, he told me he had it in hand.
But he didn't have it in hand. And in trying to backtrack and mend some steps he had taken, he managed to delete all photos from the year 2018. (This is where the ten shits were throw in.) As my daughter pointed out later -- ah, the year TWO of your grandchildren were born. Ooops.
The guy spent the rest of the day restoring files and learning how all these programs work together. Not being an Apple guy, or a Photoshop guy, or a flickr guy and certainly not a blogger guy, there was a lot that needed to be explained by me. And so we spent the day thus: him, trying to fix, understand, solve the underlying issues and repair my overstuffed computer problem, me, trying to explain all that I knew to assist in the process.
It was noon before we even toyed with the idea of whether to bother with breakfast.
(In the end, we bothered.)
In the afternoon, Ed continued with this work. I was less help then. I kept saying -- I can't do this now, I have to bake a cake!
And I did -- both have to bake and fix dinner, a somewhat special one because of Snowdrop's half year birthday. (She's five and a half today.)
If yesterday had many, many hours of outdoor work, this day had none. And perhaps that's a good thing: it was hot and steamy and now the bugs are starting to be really irritating, so all in all, nothing out there beckoned. Except maybe this (as seen on one of my quick saunters to feed the animals)...
Exploding day lilies!
Or this...
It felt odd to be so housebound. Not at all what I would expect on a sunny summer day. Ed, somewhat groggy from lack of sleep, kept at it, fixing, testing, trying to unravel the secrets of these programs that were messing terribly with my computer and looking for a solution going forward. Me, trying to keep up with dinner prep.
All this was bothersome enough, but then things got even more complicated. A friend called to tell me she was not well. So of course, you leap to the question -- is it CoVid? And yes, she will have been tested and she'll know in a few days, but she had one of those stories of many hours of waiting in the hot hot sun (despite feeling unwell) to procure a test and you sort of have to wonder -- why does every aspect of this pandemic have to be this hard?
Not everything about this day spelled trouble. In the evening, the young family was here for dinner and it was indeed the little girl's half birthday and though we don't typically make a fuss on half-a-year days, this year she did get a cake and a dinner of favorites out of me.
Five and a half.
(Just two)
(Not sure about those sparklers...)
(Even as her mommy loves them.)
Gaga, can I have a picture with you??
(Let's get Sparrow in on this...)
She was overjoyed and said many sweet things all evening long and honestly, seeing a happy child does bring you out of your own internal spin and so the evening ended late for me, for Ed, but it ended on an upnote on all fronts. Grandkids are happy, the computer issues are getting close to a solution, my friend is feeling a little better.
But my oh my, what a strange and electrifying day!
And the moon keeps shining as if nothing happened, as if it was just another July Buck Moon, shining brightly, letting us know that we are small potatoes in the scheme of things, that life goes on, no matter how weird the day may be.
