Mother's Day gadget~

I just got the perfect Mother's Day gift: A gadget-- a man's gift-- or at least the kind of gift men like to give: a GPS for my car.

Yes! Forget diamonds, flowers, and shrubs to be planted on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Forget breakfast in bed.

I need a GPS.

With my left/right confusion, and inability to visualize directions, I've been lost more times than I care to admit, closer to home than I care to admit.

I have trouble with lefts and rights. If you tell me to go left, I'll invariably head right. It's a glitch in my directional wiring. I've worked around it by excessive use of reverse gear and U-turns.

Add to that my tendency to "zone out," only to discover miles and miles later when I come out of my reverie, that I missed a turn and have no clue where I am.

I once drove by my own driveway, so engrossed in the book on tape I was listening to, that I failed to notice I was home.

My husband has come to expect my phone calls when I'm off on a jaunt somewhere. "Bruce? I'm on 95 S and it says Providence? Now where do I go?"

He always knows where I went wrong and redirects me. Except for the time that I asked, "Should I take Exit 11 S? Hurry!"

Too late. Traveling 75 mph I passed the exit before he could answer.

Today Bruce gave me the GPS before I headed off to visit my mother. She lives an hour and a half away in an assisted living home. I've driven there several times, but that means nothing. I've relied on Google-map directions on the seat beside me.

Today with my Garmin GPS suctioned to the windshield, and my destination programmed, I drove with confidence. I'd traveled .9 miles when I realized I'd left my cell phone at home.

I U-turned. The sweet GPS voice began. "Recalibrating! Turn left. Recalibrating. Turn right." She was anxious to get me to my destination.

I got nervous. I didn't want her to blow some of her digital innards, but her voice stayed calm, and I figured she needed to get used to my foibles.

She has some foibles, too, my little GPS chick. On the way home I stopped at Wrentham Village, a shopping center the size of a small town. She had trouble getting me out of a parking lot full of twists and turns, stop signs and traffic lights. "I trusted her when she said, "Turn left," even though it didn't look promising.

She tried for a while, then went silent, just a gray arrow on a blank screen. I followed my gut and got us both out, and soon she was confidently guiding me home.

Maybe between the two of us, we'll get where we need to go. She'll remind me to turn, and I'll get her out of the tough parking lots.

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...

Killing time~

I'd woken feeling stuffy headed, slightly allergy-ish, puffy-eyed, and a tad grumpy. Lots to do, little time in which to do it, school issues keeping me in a state of angst, I considered not going to David's game. But it was Saturday, the game fairly close to home-- Salem State College-- an hour or so north through Boston to the town of Salem, famous for the 1692 witch trials that saw 19 suspected witches, many of them social outcasts, hang on Gallows Hill. A change of pace was what I needed whether I wanted it or not, so I went. I squeezed in a walk around the block that enclosed Salem State's O'Keefe Center while waiting for the game to begin. Just to kill time. I get so few chances to do that. Others walking, too, passed with no eye contact, no greetings, just sharing the same planet. Two were coming toward me. Still unfocused in the distance . . . one was tall, the other short . . . two men . . . loose clothing . . . like army clothes, camouflage . . . beard and lon...

Cancer is the asshole~

Today was the first time in a long, long time that I’ve called Bruce an asshole—and the first time since his cancer diagnosis. How can you call some one with cancer an asshole? After all, cancer patients don’t feel good--they’re dealing with a deadly disease, there are all sorts of worries, frustrations, and side effects and changes to their bodies, quality of life issues... and all the other little quirky symptoms that I only find out about about when Bruce tells his nurse. I’m pretty patient and understanding by nature, and all the more so now when he vents the inevitable “ cancer anger ” a little (or a lot). Today he got impatient and snippy, frustrated that we couldn’t merge our iCalendars—he hates when technology goes awry. Who doesn't? For him, it's one more thing out of his control. He started to tell me what I’d done incorrectly in the attempt to merge, and kept cutting me off when I tried to show him what I did...which, by the way, was corre...

~Upstream and Down~

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