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Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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12:56 p.m. - 2011-03-09
Mixy mash.

Had to make a pharmacy run yesterday and deliberately waited for Wolf to get home so I could take him with me. The car is an excellent place to talk with kids and I'd wanted to continue our recent discussion about personal responsibility, but once rolling toward Malltown I realized neither of us was much in the mood for any emotional heavy-lifting so instead we talked about school and music and other random stuff. Turned out some heavy topics snuck in there anyhow on the way home. Wolf understands the value of talking about things when we're both facing the windshield rather than having to make eye contact too.

Sometimes I get the feeling he just tells me what he thinks I want to hear, an evasion that's less about being sneaky than it is about his believing he's being kind. Wolf's pretty sharp about some things and partly because Mick goes on about it a lot has realized that I've been doled far more than the usual allotment of rancid tuna sandwiches and rotten deviled eggs from Life's picnic basket and has decided he's not going to add any more to that unpalatable menu if he can help it. Fortunately, yesterday's discussion was very honest. He wasn't shining me or pretending to be Mommy's Good Son. I told him how much I appreciated his honesty. It was sweet of him to want to join Mick in the conspiracy to 'protect' me from everything from tax audits to stink bugs, shows what a loving heart he has, but he's the kid and I'm the mom and that's that. Putting on a false happy face doesn't do anything good for either of us.

He nodded and said he loved me, then pulled out his phone, cued up a music video and disappeared into an electronic stupor for the rest of the trip home. Mom and son bonding time was officially over for the day.

So it goes.

Today's fun fest includes having to do some perplexing crap to my laptop's anti-virus. I loathe, loathe, loathe stuff like this. I know a large part of my angst is from simply being unused to feeling dumb. I've yet to get the hang of even the simplest installations and such. Computer-ese is a language I cannot comprehend. And I hate it. I hate feeling so helpless and lost. Trying to do anything above straight up using my machines is maddening to me. It's like I'm tone deaf and everyone else hears the music just fine. There's some crucial step, some order to the way computers are organized that escapes me. Some thing I'm blind to that should be right there in front of me and I can't see it!

I'm The Knower, for Pete's sake! I'm the fount of information- practical, useless and otherwise! I've NEVER lost a game of Trivial Pursuit! And yet computers defeat me. Every fucking time. And man, that burns. It irks the shit out of me that there's hordes of twerps who wouldn't be able to use your, you're, yore, or to, too, and two, or they're, there and their properly even with a gun held to their heads but blippety, blippety, blip! They've installed and customized 1,845 apps on their phones and taught their laptops to walk the dog and make frappaccinos. And here I am unable to keep the latest Sims patch from crashing a 1,000 times in a row and now have a fucking useless game. And that it took me FIVE HOURS to even find the right combination of key words on Trend Micro's help page to make it finally barf up an answer to my problem.

Goddamn I hate feeling stupid.

Anyhoodle. Here's a good thing.

D-land's being quirky again with the notes, so I want to give a big shout-out to my amazing friend, K, who just got her braces off! Which, when you're in your late 40s is a genuine Big Deal. See, Amazing K is on a quest to have her life in order by her 50th birthday, sort of a comprehensive mind/body/spiritual/career/relationship make-over, and orthodontia is part of the package. She's doing a hella good job with all of it too. Not only did she power on through the pain and inconvenience of braces, she did it while carving out a mighty space for herself with her job in a field that grows and changes so fast that to stand still to look at it causes whiplash, and doing this while completely renovating her kitchen, keeping up with her volunteer commitments, and raising a teenager. There's a husband, a mother, a pack of pets, a garden, and scads of assorted friends and other relatives who all get special notice and care from her too. Like most of us, K, never gives herself enough credit and has a black belt in guilt, so I'd appreciate it if you guys would join me in raising a glass and toasting a terrific and inspiring woman.

To K! So very proud of you, girlfriend.


Love, ~LA


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