LetMeBeClear

It is back to Walter again. I think this is kind of a hopeful poem especially from him. It is a nice one for starting the new year - in a world of wonders far away.

Dream Song

Sunlight, moonlight,
Twilight, starlight-
Gloaming at the close of day,
And an owl calling,
Cool dews falling
In a wood of oak and may.

Lantern-light, taper-light,
Torchlight, no-light:
Darkness at the shut of day,
And lions roaring,
Their wrath pouring
In wild waste places far away.

Elf-light, bat-light,
Touchwood-light and toad-light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
And a small face smiling
In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away.

CC had her first classroom trauma. She has lived 8 years without this feeling. I am sorry that it found her. In class, her teacher was putting math problems on the board "for fun" they don't do math at her school. CC tried raising her hand for every problem and knew the answers to all the ones going up. The problems kept getting harder, and she kept raising her hand.

When she was finally called on, she got nervous. Her palms got sweaty. The problem was 55 - 36. She knew it needed borrowing, so she mentally removed one from the first digit, did that subtraction and wrote down a 1 on the tens place. Her face was flushed, she wasn't thinking. Everyone was staring at her, she added the second two digits together instead of subtracting, remembered she had already taken care of the tens place, and wrote down a 1. Her answer was 11. She looked back in time to realize her mistake, but before she could tell her teacher that it should be 19, (Here comes the worst part) the teacher said - "That's okay, You probably haven't gotten to that level yet."

Oh. The worst part is that the teacher thought she didn't know how to do it and felt sorry for her. Her tongue tied in knots, and she couldn't speak. We've all been the victim of our nerves. All I could do was hug her and tell her that she is human and it happens to us all. My poor baby. She kept raising her hand to try to redeem herself, but didn't get called on again.

Tonight I rebooted Three servers. It is funny, all of the times I have rebooted servers as part of my job, I still get a little sick nervous feeling. Its a fear that I rebooted the wrong one. I have only done that once - probably. Hundreds of servers and dozens of years, and I still get the same feeling. OOps, did I do the wrong box?

I am an insomniac. I didn't refill the prescription for the sleeping pills yet. If I take them every night for too long, then they don't work as well, and I am going to need them to work. Last week I slept without them at all - if you call that sleeping.

This week I switched to an herbal sleeping pill. It has me sleeping. Now I am dreaming. I think I know what is bothering me. Why I am curling up inside. Every night I dream about my son going to away. Twenty Three more days. He will take his one-way ticket and his student visa and get on a plane and not comeback until May. And that will just be for a visit. And that is not even definite.

I feel pressure to make this Christmas extra-special. But that goes against my nature. I have worked hard to make Christmas something that is not filled with fake happiness and real anxiety.

I feel pressure from people telling me how I should feel. I hate that.

I feel pressure from people who want to "remind me" of all the things that still need to get done before he goes. He needs to clean his room. He hasn't packed. He is going to be in for a shock when he has to start doing his own x.y.z. People who have never been anywhere or taken any BOLD steps are not allowed to criticize him and definitely not allowed to criticize him then say they are just trying to help.

I feel like the person in my life that I have known and loved for the longest is leaving me and I am happy for him and proud of him. BUT he is still leaving me and it still hurts. And yes of course, others love him. And he is just going to the other side of the world. And all of this makes rational sense to me.

Reason doesn't stop you from curling up into a little ball inside of yourself. Reason doesn't help you sleep at night. sleeping pills do.

I was Almost going to go with Bronte, but Shakespeare won this month. It probably had something to do with the 16 inches of snow and the 4o mile per hour winds I enjoyed at work today although the snowball fight with the family before work was much more fun. I do like the snow, but the wind blows.

As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [Blow, blow, thou winter wind]
by William Shakespeare

Lord Amiens, a musician, sings before Duke Senior's company

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing . . .

You just can't trust what is in your food. I swear that in a couple of years I am going to have to grow my own food in order to be able to eat anything.

I carefully planned Thanksgiving so that I wouldn't get a migraine. I never eat poultry because most of it is full of some horrible unlabeled, inedible swill that sends me writhing in pain to a small dark space. I risk it with organic turkey on Thanksgiving. This year I even baked my own bread to make stuffing with so that I wouldn't get anything on the menu that I didn't know the origin of. Well, well guess what? About thirty minutes after I happily pushed my empty plate aside, my dining room became too bright. My family became too loud. My head was smashed in by the familiar pain of a migraine. My darling rushed for the Imitrex. We were done giving thanks.

My turkey wasn't a Tyson, but it was crappy-ass practices like this antibiotic scam where agri-businesses lie and do anything to protect their bottom line instead of the integrity of our food that leave me not able to even safely read labels.

I'm going to have to grow my own food to know what is in it.

We all get terrible customer support these days. Especially phone support. I think we have been slowly conditioned to accept it.

Since I was surprised today by excellent support, I had to say something.

I made plane reservations for my brother, his lovely wife and my cutie nephew. I was on the phone with my brother while making the reservations and holding the phone in my left hand. It is my only excuse.

When I received the confirmation, I realized that I had left the R out of Christi - so she became CHISTI. That could have been a terrible problem with the travel restrictions these days.

I reluctantly called the airline and just pressed "0" to get a person. Almost immediately a cheerful person came on the line. I explained the problem, she looked up the reservation, stifled a quick chuckle and said it was not problem but she would have to get someone else to change it. She put me on hold. Less than a minute later, she was back and confirmed that the change had been made and asked if there was anything else she could help with.

Cheers! to Excellent Customer support. It matters.
And if you are wondering, it was SOUTHWEST.